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THE LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
IOS ANGELES 



THE LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORHH 







*. 









It' 






REV. DR. BEECHER'S 



SERMON, 

ADDRESSED TO THE 
LEGISLATURE OF CONNECTICUT; 

AT 



THX DAT Or TU 



BY LYMAN BEECHER, D. D. 



-HAVHN : 

?t?BLISHED BY ORDER OF THE LSISLATf &K. 
I. Bunce, Printer, a 

182$. 



Ala General Assembly of the Slate of Connecticut, holden at New-Haven in said 
Stale, on the f.rsl Wednesday of May, in the year of our lard one thousand 
eight hundred and twenty six 

PESOLVED, That the Hon Samuel Chimh, end Monis Woodruff, be di- 
fert-'.d to vviit on the Rev. LYMAN BEEOHciR, and preseut him the trunks 
of t!e Gen ml A-?eiubl'. for the Scr-nun delivered by him this day, and re- 
quest a copy of the same, (hat it n y be printed. 
A true Copy of Record, 

Examined by 

THOMAS DAY, Secretary* 



REVELATION xxi. 5. 

"And He that sat upon the throne said Behold, Imake all thingi 

new." 



HE history of the world is the history of human nature in 
ruins. No state of society has been permanent and universal 
which corresponds with the capacities of enjoyments posses- 
sed by man, or with his conceptions and desires. Small por- 
tions only of the human family have, at the same time, enjoyed 
a state of society, in any considerable degree desirable: while 
much the greatest part of mankind have, in all ages, endured 
the evils of barbarism and despotism. 

It is equally manifest, that this unhappy condition of our race 
has not been the result of physical necessity, but of moral cau- 
ses. The earth is as capable of sustaining a happy as a miser- 
able population, and it is the perversion only of her resources and 
of the human faculties, which has darkened the earth and made the 
misery of man so great. The human intellect has given proof of 
vigour and ingenuity sufficient to bless the world ; and powerful 
efforts nave been made in every age, by afflicted humanity, to es- 
cape trom this downward bias, and rise to elevated and permanent 
enjoyment. Egypt, in her monumental ruins, affords evidence 
of a high state of the arts, which arose and passed away at a 
period beyond the reach of history. In Greece, a vigorous in- 
tellect and favouring clime thrust up, from the dead level around 
her, a state of society comparatively cultivated and happy ; but 
the sun of her prosperity blazed upon the surrounding darkness 



6 

t& set .speedily in the night of ages. Rome fought her way to 
dominion and civilization, and furnished specimens of mental 
vigour and finished culture. But the superstructure of her 
greatness rested upon oppressed humanity, and was reared by 
"he plunder of a devastated world. Commerce, which has giv- 
en to cities a temporary eminence, has elevated but a little the 
pjoral condition of the multitude ; and science, which was restor- 
ed to modern Europe at the Reformation, and commerce and 
the arts, which have followed in her train, have not, to this day, 
disenthralled the nations. 

From experiments so long and so hopelessly made, it would 
sepm to result that, in the conflict between the heart and the in- 
tellect of man. victory has always declared on the side of the 
heart ; which has led many to conclude that the condition of man 
h hopeless in respect to any universal abiding melioration of his 
forKli'-iort. The text throws light upon this dark destiny of man. 
It is a voice from heaven announcing the approach of help from 
above. " He that sitteth upon the throne saith, behold I make 
all things new." 

The renovation here announced is a moral renovation, which 
r-: .til change the character and condition of men. The renova- 
tion will not be partial in its influence, like the sun shining 
ih clouds on favoured spots, but co-extensive with the ru- 
in. Nor shall its results be that national glory, which gilds on- 
palace, and cheers only the dwellings of the noble. It 
shall bring down the mountains and exalt the valleys. It shall 
:<Ticl liberty and equality to a!! the dwellings of men. Nor shall 
ic stop at tiic fire-side, or exhaust its blessings in temporal mer- 
cies. It shall enter the hidden man of the heart, and there de- 
stroy the power which has blasted human hopes and baffled 
human efforts. Nor will the change be transient. It is the last 
dispensation of heaven for the relief of this miserable world, and 
-ir*:! bring glory to God in the highest, to the earth peace, and 
good will to men. 

Manv have doubted whether such a renovation of the world 
will ever be accomplished ; but, He that sat upon the throne, 
sakJ, It is done : It is as certain as if it were come to pass. 

I shall submit to your consideration, at this time, some of the 
reasons which justify the hope, that our nation has been raised 
up by Providence to exert an efficient instrumentality in this 
moral renovation of the world. 

I' observe then, that, to this renovation, great changes are re- 
quired in the civil and religious condition of nations. 

The monopoly of the soil must be abolished. Hitherto 
b: rr^britv'of mankind, who have tilled the earth, have 



been slaves or tenants. The soil has been owned by kings. 
and military chieftains, and nobles, and by them rented to land- 
lords, and, by these, to still smaller dealers, and by there 
again it has been divided and rented, until the majority, who 
paid the rent, have sustained, in the sweat of their brow, not. 
only their own families, but three or four orders of society above 
them, and have been themselves crushed beneath the weight, or 
have lived, on the borders of starvation. The sickness of a week 
and often of a single day makes them paupers. 

This same monopoly of the soil sends another large class of 
the community into manufacturing establishments, to wear out 
their days in ignorance and hopeless poverty, and another to 
the camp and navy, where honor and wealth await the few, 
and ignorance, and an early grave the many. 

The consequence of excluding so many from the posses- 
sion and healthful cultivation of the soil, is ignorance, and im- 
providence, and reckless indifference, and vice, and turbu- 
lence. Tortured by their oppressions, and unrestrained by mo- 
ral principle, they are prepared for desperate deeds. Such a 
state of society cannot be made happy : the evil is radical, and 
can only be remedied by giving a new direction to the physical 
moral and intellectual energies of men. We may as well band 
with iron the trees of the forest, and expect their expansion ; and 
throw upon them, in stinted measure, the light and the rain of 
heaven, and expect their luxuriant growth, as to cramp the hu- 
man mind by unequal institutions, and expect the devolopement 
of its resources, in a happy state of society. Room for action 
must be provided, and light must be poured upon the under- 
standing, and motive must be pressed upon the heart. Man 
must be unshackled, enlightened, and stimulated.. But to ac- 
complish this, the earth must be owned by those who till it. 
This will give action to industry, vigour to the body, and tone 
to the mind, and, by the attendant blessing of heaven, religion 
to the heart. From agriculture, stimulated by personal rights, 
will result commerce, science, arts, liberty and independence. 

The attraction of gravity is the great principle of motion in 
the material world, and the possession of the earth by its inhab- 
itants in fee simple is the great principle of motion in the moral 
world. Nearly all the political evils which have afflicted man- 
kind, have resulted from the unrighteous monopoly of the earth ; 
and the predicted renovation can never be accomplished, until, 
to some extent, this monopoly has passed away, and the earth 
is extensively tilled by the independent owners of the soil. 

To the moral renovation of the world, a change is required 
in the prevailing forms of government. 



The monopoly of power must be superseded by the suffra- 
ges of freemen. While the great body of the people are exclu- 
ded from all voice and influence in legislation, it is impossible to 
constitute a state of society such as the faculties of man allovr 
and the benevolence of God desires. While the few govern 
without responsibility, they will seek their own elevation and 
depress the multitude. To elevate society, and bring out the 
human .energies in a well ordered state of things, the mass of 
the nations must be enlightened, and qualified for self-govern- 
ment, and must yield obedience to delegated power. 

The rights of conscience, also, must be restored to man, be- 
fore the moral renovation of the world can be expected. 

Few of the millions <hat have peopled the earth, have been 
qualified by knowledge, or permitted by the government under 
which they lived, to examine the Bible and judge for themselves. 
The nominal religions of this world have been supported by go- 
ernments, who, of course, have prescribed the creed, and mod- 
elled the worship, and controled the priesthood. From such a 
state of things, what better results could be expected, than that 
ambitious men should be exalted to the sacred office while re- 
ligion itself was despised and persecuted ? Governments and 
ecclesiastics must cease then to dictate what men shall believe, 
and in what manner they shall worship God. The Church must 
be emancipated from worldly dominion, and enjoy that liberty 
wherewith Jesus Christ has made her free. 

Is it to be expected, then, that kingly governments shall cease, 
and the republican form become universal ? I shall not stop 
now to discuss this question. I would only ask whether mon- 
archical governments can be sustained without a nobility and an 
established religion, and whether these privileged orders can 
exist without that monopoly of the soil, and of political influ- 
ence, and of the right of conscience which are destructive to 
a religious and happy state of society. That governments will 
change their name, or all their ancient forms, I will not say. 
But that that they will, under some form, become so far popular 
in their spirit, as that the political power shall be in the hands 
of the people, I cannot doubt. 

It has been contended, that Christianity cannot exist in this 
world without the aid of religious establishments. But, with 
more truth, it may be said, that, from the beginning to this day, 
it has existed in spite of them. It took possession of the earth 
in the face of them, and has survived their deadly embrace, and 
now bursting from their alliance, finds In them the most formi- 
dable opposition to evangelical doctrine and vital godliness. 

To accomplish these gieat changes in the civil and religious 



condition of the world, instruction alone will not avail. A great 
example is needed, of which the world may take knowledge, 
which shall inspire hope, and rouse and concentrate the ener- 
gies of man. But where shall such an experiment be made ? 
Africa requires for herself the commiseration of the world, and 
in Europe and Asia, it would require ages to dig up the founda- 
tions of despotism and remove the rubbish only to prepare the 
way for such a state of society as we have described : This too 
must be done in opposition to proscription and organized resis- 
tance. There is also such a mass of uninformed mind, accus- 
tomed to crouch under burdens, and so much is required to pre 
pare it for civil liberty, that little hope remains that the old 
world, undirected, and unstimulated by example, will ever dis- 
enthral itself. Some nation, itself free, must blow the trumpet, 
and hold up the light. England enjoys to some extent the bles- 
sings of civil liberty. But in England there is so great a monop- 
oly of the soil and of power, and so much overturning feared 
and needed, that it is only in stinted measures, and with circum- 
spect policy, she deals out her sympathy and holds up her light. 
A more vigorous ally is needed, which shall push on the work 
with a fearless heart and powerful hand. But where can that 
nation be found ? Look now at the history of our fathers and 
behold what God has wrought. They were such a race of men 
as never before laid the foundations of an empire ; athletic, in- 
telligent and pious. But how should this portion of a nation's 
population be uprooted and driven into exile ? They could not 
remain at home. In that age of darkness and land of bondage, 
they had formed some just conceptions of civil and religious lib- 
erty, and would fain have modified the civil government and the 
church of God according to the pattern which we have described. 
But the reformation from popery, superintended by govern- 
ment and regulated by policy, stopped short of what the pious 
expected and desired. The Puritans could not in all things 
conform to the church, and the church would not suffer them to 
dissent ; and thus they were driven into exile. And now be- 
hold their institutions, such as the world needs, and, attended 
as they have been by the power of God, able to elevate and 
renovate the world. They recognize the equal rights of man- 
give the soil to the cultivator, and self-government and the rights 
of conscience to the people. They enlighten the intellect, and 
form the conscience, and bring the entire influence of the divine 
government to bear upon the heart. It was the great object of 
our fathers to govern men by the fear of the Lord ; to exhibit 
the precepts, apply the motives, and realize the dispositions, 
which the word of God inculcates and his Spirit inspires j to i- 

2 



10 

w 2 at. 

feue families and schools and towns and states with this wisdom 
from above. They had no projects of human device, no theo- 
ries of untried efficacy. They hung all their hopes of civil and 
religious liberty upon the word of God, and the ifficacy of his 
Spirit. Nor was theirs the presumptuous hope of grace with- 
out effort. It was by training men for self-government, that 
they expected to make freemen, and, by becoming fellow work- 
ers with God, that they expected his aid in forming Christians ; 
while, by intellectual culture, and moral influence, and divine 
power, they prepared men to enjoy and perpetuate civil liberty. 

The Law, with sleepless vigilance, watched over the family, 
the Church and the State ; and a vigorous and united public 
opinion rendered its execution certain -and effectual. Every 
family was required to possess a bible ; every district a school, 
and every town a pastor. The law protected the Sabbath, and 
sustained the public worship of God, and punished immorality ; 
and with mild but effectual energy, ruled over all. The great 
excellence of these institutions is, that '.hey are practical and 
powerful. The people are not free in name and form mere- 
merely, but in deed and in truth. Were all forms blotted out, 
the people would be free. The governments are free govern- 
ments from the foundation to the top stone, and of such practi- 
cal efficacy as to make free men. 

The family, embodying instruction and government, was it- 
self an embryo Empire. 

In the school district, the people were called upon to exercise 
their own discretion and rights, and, in the ecclesiastical society, 
to rear their place of worship, elect their pastor and provide for 
his support, and all under the protection and guidance of Law. 

The towns, in their popular assemblies, discussed their local 
interests and administered their own concerns. In these, ori- 
ginated the Legislature, and from the Legislature emanated the 
Courts of Justice. 

In the States, all, which is local and peculiar, is superintended 
with a minuteness and efficacy, which no consolidated govern- 
ment could possibly accomplish. The people have only to as- 
certain from experience what their convenience or interest de- 
mands, and their wish becomes a law. And still in the national 
government there is all the comprehension of plan, and power 
of resource and unity of action which are required for the high- 
est degree of national prosperity. 

It has been doubted whether a republic so extensive as ours 
can be held together and efficiently governed. But where there 
is this intellectual and moral influence, the habitual exercise of 
civil and religious liberty, from the family upward, we see not 



11 

why a republic may not be extended indefinitely and be st\U 
the strongest and most effective government in the world. 

The history of our nation is indicative of some great design to 
be accomplished by it. It is a history of perils and deliverances 
and of strength ordained out of weakness. The wars with the 
savage tribes, and with the French, and at last with the Eng- 
lish, protracted expense and toil and blood, through a period 
of one hundred and fifty years. No nation, out of such weak- 
ness, ever became so strong, or was guided through such per- 
ils to such safety. " If it had not been the Lord who was on. 
our side, now may Israel say, when men rose up against us, 
then they had swallowed us up quickly, when their wrath was 
kindled against us." These deliverances the enemy beheld 
often with wonder, and our fathers, always, with thanksgiving 
and praise. But, in the whole history of the world, God has 
not been accustomed to grant signal interpositions without ends 
of corresponding magnitude to be answered by them. Indeed, 
if it had been the design of Heaven to establish a powerful na- 
tion, in the full enjoyment of civil and religious liberty, where 
all the energies of man might find scope and excitement or pur- 
pose to shew the world by experiment, ot what man is capable, 
and to shed light on the darkness which should awake the slum- 
bering eye, and rouse the torpid mind, and nerve the palsied 
arm of millions, where could such an experiment have been 
made but in this country, and by whom more auspiciously than 
by our fathers, and by what means so well adapted to the end 
as their institutions ? 

The course which is now adopted by Christians of all deno- 
minations, to support and to extend at home and abroad, reli- 
gious and moral influence, would seem to indicate the purpose 
of God to render us, extensively, the almoners of his mercy to 
this world. 

For two hundred years the religious institutions of our land were 
secured by law. But as our numbers increased, and liberty of 
conscience resulted in many denominations of Christians, it be- 
came impossible to secure by law the universal application of 
religious and moral influence. And yet, without this mighty 
energy the whole system must fail. We might as well rely on 
the harvests which our fathers reared for bread, as to rely on 
the external forms of liberty which they established, without the 
application of that vital energy, by which the body politic was 
animated and moved. But, at the very time when the civil law 
had waxed old and was passing away, God began to pour out 
his Spirit upon the Churches, and voluntary associations of 
Christians arose to apply and extend that influence, which the 
law could no longer apply. And now we are blessed with so- 






12 

cieties to aid in the support of the Gospel at home, and to ex- 
tend it to the new settlements. We have Bible Societies, and 
Tract Societies, and associations of individuals, who, instead of 
the Select-Men, make it their business to see that every family 
has a Bible, and every Church a pastor, and every child a cat- 
echism. And to these succeeded Education Societies, that our 
nation may not outgrow the means of grace. And while these 
means of moral culture are supplied, this great nation begins to 
look down from her eminence, with compassion, upon a world 
in darkness, and put forth her mighty arm to disenthral and el- 
evate the human family. 

Let it be remembered that the means now relied on are pre- 
cisely those, which our fathers applied, and which have secu- 
red our prosperity. And when we contemplate the unexampled 
resources of this country ; its men; its soil, climate, sea-coast, 
rivers, lakes, and canals ; its agriculture, commerce, arts and 
wealth, and all in connexion with the influence of republican and 
religious institutions, is it too much to be hoped that God will 
accept our instrumentality, and render it effectual, extensively, 
for the renovation of the human family ? 

The revivals of religion which prevail in our land among chris- 
tians of all denominations,furnish cheering eridence ofthe presence 
of evangelical doctrine, and ofthe power of that Spirit by which 
the truth is to be made efficacious in the renovation of the world. 
These revivals are distinguished by their continuance through 
a period of thirty years; by their extent, pervading the nation ; 
by their increasing frequency in the same places ; by their ra- 
pidity and power, in a few weeks changing the character of 
towns and cities, and even of whole districts and countries, 
an earnest of that glorious time, when a nation shall be born in 
a day, purifying our literary institutions, and multiplying pas- 
tors and missionaries to cheer our own land and enlighten dis- 
tant nations. 

The revivals of religion in this country are without a parallel 
in the history of the world, and are constituting an era of moral 
power entirely new. Already the churches look chiefly to them 
for their members and pastors, and for that power upon public 
opinion, which retards declension, gives energy to law, and vol- 
untary support to religious institutions. 

These revivals then, falling in with all these antecedent indi- 
cations, seem to declare the purpose of God to employ this na- 
tion in the glorious work of renovating the world. 

If we look at our Missionaries abroad, and witness the smiles 
of Heaven upon their efforts, our confidence will be increased, 
that it is the purpose of God to render our nation a blessing to 
the world. In talents, and piety, and learning, and doctrine. 



13 

and civil policy, they are the legitimate descendants of the Pu- 
ritans. Every where they command high respect, and have 
been distinguished by their judicious and successful efforts. In 
Ceylon and Hawaii, and among the natives of this country, they 
are fast supplanting idolatry by Christian institutions. Revivals 
of religion cheer and bless them, and churches and all the ele- 
ments of Christian civilization are multiplying around them. 

Let this nation go on, then, and multiply its millions and its 
resources, and bring the whole under the influence of our civil 
and religious institutions, and with the energies of its concentra- 
ted benevolence send out evangelical instruction ; and who can. 
calculate what our blessed instrumentality shall have accom- 
plished, when He who sitteth upon the throne shall have made 
all things new. 

If Swartz and Buchanan, and Vanderkemp, and Carey, and 
Martyn, and Brainard, could each alone accomplish so much, 
what may not be expected from the energies of such a nation 
as this ? 

If we consider also our friendly relations with the South Ame- 
rican States, and the close imitation they are dispdsed to make 
of our civil and literary institutions, who can doubt that the 
spark which our forefathers struck will yet enlighten this entire 
continent ? But when the light of such a hemisphere shall go 
up to heaven, it will throw its beams beyond the waves it will 
shine into the darkness there, and be comprehended ; it will 
awaken desire, and hope, and effort, and produce revolutions- 
and overturnings, until the world is free. 

From our revolutionary struggle proceeded the revolution in 
France, and all which has followed in Naples, Portugal, Spain, 
and Greece ; and though the bolt of every chain has been driv- 
en again, they can no more hold the heaving mass than the chains 
of Xerxes could hold the Hellespont vexed with storms. Floods 
have been poured upon the rising flame, out they can no more 
extinguish it than showers of rain can extinguish the fires of 
jKtna. Still it burns, and still the mountain heaves and mur- 
murs ; and soon it will explode with voices and thunderings, 
and great earthquakes. Then will the trumpet of jubilee sound, 
and earth's debased millions will leap from the dust, and shake 
off their chains, and cry Hosanna to the Son of David. 

Before we conclude this discourse, let us attend to some of the 
duties to which we are called by our high providential destiny. 

And most evidently we are called upon 

1. To cherish with high veneration and grateful recollections 
the memory of our fathers. Both the ties of nature and the 
dictates of policy demand this. And surely no nation ever had 
less occasion to be ashamed of its ancestry : for while most na- 



tions trace their origin to barbarians, the foundations of our na- 
tion were laid by civilized men by Christians. Many of them 
were men of distinguished families, of powerful talents, of 
great learning, of pre-eminent wisdom, of decided character, 
and of most inflexible integrity. And yet, not unfrequently, 
they have been treated as if they had no virtues ; while their 
sins and follies have been sedulously immortalized in satirical 
anecdote. The influence of such treatment of the fathers is too 
manifest. It creates and lets loose upon their invaluable insti- 
the Vandal spirit of innovation and overthrow : for after the 
memory of our lathers shall have been rendered contemptible, 
who will appreciate and sustain their institutions? 

The precious memory of our fathers should be the watch- word 
of liberty throughout the land ; for, imperfect as they were, 
the world before had not seen their like, nor will it soon, we 
fear, behold their like again. 

Such models of moral excellence ; such apostles of civil and 
religious liberty ; such shades of the illustrious dead, standing 
in high antiquity, and looking down upon their descendants with 
approbation or reproof, according as they follow or depart from 
the good way. constitute a censorship inferior only to the eye of 
God ; and to ridicule them is national suicide. 

Tie doctrines of our fathers have been represented as of a 
licentious tendency. But when other systems shall have pro- 
duced a piety as devoted, a morality as pure, a patriotism as 
disinterested, and a state of society as happy, as have prevailed 
where their doctrines have been most prevalent ; it may be in 
season to seek an answer to this objection. 

The same doctrines have been charged with inspiring a spir- 
it of dogmatism and religious domination. But in all the strug- 
gles of man with despotic power for civil liberty, the doctrines of 
our fathers have been found on the side of liberty as their op- 
posite have been found usually in the ranks of arbitrary power. 

The persecutions instituted by our fathers, have been the oc- 
casion of ceaseless obloquy upon their fair fame. And truly it 
was a fault of no ordinary magnitude that they did persecute. 
But let him whose ancestors were not ten times more guilty, cast 
the first stone, and the ashes of our fathers will n0 more be dis- 
turbed. More exclamation and invective has been called forth 
by the few instances of persecution by the fathers of New-Eng- 
land, than by all the fires which lighted the realm of Old Eng- 
land for centuries, and drove into exile thousands of her most 
valuable subjects. 

The superstition and bigotry of our fathers are themes on 
which some of their descendants, far enough themselves from 
superstition, if not from bigotry, have delighted to dwell. But 



15 

when we look abroad and behold the condition of the world, 
compared with the condition of New-England, we may justly 
exclaim, Would to God that the ancestors of all the nations had 
been not only almost, but altogether such bigots as our fathers 
were ! 

Their strictness in the family, and in church and state, has 
been complained of as too rigid. But they were laying the 
foundation of a nation, and applying a moral power whose im- 
pulse should extend through ages ; and who that beholds the 
rapid and appalling moral relaxation of the present day, can 
believe that they put the system in motion with too much rig- 
our ? In proportion as their discipline had been less strict, our 
present condition had been more alarming, and our future pros- 
pects more desperate. 

Our fathers have been ridiculed as an uncouth and uncourt- 
ly generation. And truly, it must be admitted that they were 
not as expert in the graces of dress, and the etiquette of the 
drawing-room, as some of their descendants. But neither could 
these have felled the trees, nor guided the plough, nor spread 
the sail which they did ; nor braved the dangers of Indian war- 
fare, nor displayed the wisdom in counsel which our fathers dis- 
played. And had none stepped upon the Plymouth rock but 
such effeminate critics as these, the poor natives never would 
have mourned the wilderness lost, but would have brushed them 
from the land as they would brush the puny insect from their 
face ; the Pequods would have slept in safety that night which 
was their last, and no intrepid Mason had hung upon their rear, 
and driven into exile the panic-struck fugitives. 

2. We are called upon to cherish and extend our religious 
institutions. 

Religion was the power on which our fathers relied the pow- 
er which has made us what we are, and which must guarantee 
the perpetuity of our blessings. Every other influence has been 
tried and has failed ; this has been tried with ample promise of 
success. The application of religious and moral influence is 
therefore the great duty to which as a nation we are called. 
This is the article of our rise or fall of our glorious immortal- 
ity or our hasty dissolution. Every thing but this may be safe- 
ly left to the operation of existing causes. Ambition will secure 
the interests of education and science ; the love of gold will 
push agriculture and commerce and arts ; and the pride of lib- 
erty will arm the nation, and render it invincible. All these 
things the nations who have preceded us have been able to do. 
But there was a sickness of the heart which they could neither 
endure nor heal ; and with this same disease this nation is sick, 
and intellectual culture, and civil liberty, and national wealth 



16 

will not heal it. There is but one remedy; and that is the 
preaching of the gospel with the Holy Ghost sent down from on 
high. But to render the gospel effectual, the religious educa- 
tion of the family, and the moral culture of our schools and col- 
leges must be secured ; and the Sabbath must be rescued from 
profanation. The Sabbath is the great organ of the divine ad- 
ministration the only means provided by God to give ubiquity 
and power to His moral government. The intellectual culture 
of a nation requires schools and literary institutions ; and that 
the subjects of instruction shall be brought under their influence. 
Let the fascinations of pleasure, or the demands of labour with- 
draw the children and youth from the power of intellectual cul- 
ture i and ignorance will ensue. So let the stream of pleas- 
ure and of worldly cares bear away the population of the land 
from the house of God, and from the duties of devotion on the 
Sabbath ; and ignorance of God, and of His laws will with equal 
certainty ensue ; irreligion will prevail, and immorality and dis- 
soluteness, to an extent utterly inconsistent with the permanence 
of republican institutions. Europe can never enjoy civil liberty 
wntil she shall do more homage to the Sabbath of God ; and we 
shall enjoy it but a short space after we have ceased to render 
to God his right in that sacred day : for all the millions who vi- 
olate the Sabbath will draw themselves from the moral power of 
the divine government, deprive their families of a religious edu- 
cation, and abandon them to the power of their evil hearts and 
their own bad example. 

In the mean time the secular interests of men are so indissolu- 
tly connected, that the stream of business put in motion by the 
wicked on the Sabbath day, not only pains the eye of the virtu- 
ous, but, as it deepens and roars and rolls onward its turbid wa- 
ters, it draws into itself by the associations of business, a large 
and still larger portion of the community, until it spreads unre- 
sisted over the land, obliterates the government of God, and sub- 
stitutes covetousness and pleasure and dissoluteness, instead of 
godliness and the morality of the gospel. 

The present undoubtedly is the generation which is to decide 
the fate of this great empire, by deciding whether the Sabbath 
of God shall be preserved or blotted out; for the temptations of 
the seaboard and of canals are immense, and are increasing 
most fearfully; and unless public sentiment and law shall make 
a stand soon, we may as well attempt to stop the rolling of the 
ocean or the current of our mighty rivers. 

The universal extension of our religious institutions is the only 
means then of reconciling our unparallelled prosperity with na- 
tional purity and immortality. Without the preserving power 
of religious and moral influence, our rapid increase in wealth will 

L 



17 

be the occasion of our swift destruction. The rank vegetation 
of ynsa notified enterprise thrown into one capacious reservoir of 
putrefaction, will send up over the land desolation and death. 
Ko nation so short lived as ours, unless we can balance out 
prosperity by moral power. Our sun has moved onward from 
his morning to his meridian, with a rapidity and glory which has 
amazed the world. But unless we can extend the power of re- 
ligious institutions through the land, dark clouds will soon ob- 
scure his glory, ^md his descent to a night of ages will be more 
rapid than his rising. 

When we were colonies or unallied states, the law could make 
provision for the creation and application of moral powers. 
The law could compel men to desist from secular employments 
and vain amusements on the Sabbath. The law could compel 
men to support the gospel and attend the public worship of 
Go<i and the Select-men could see to it that every town should 
in due time settle a minister, and that every family should pos- 
sess a Bible and an orthodox catechism. But these means of 
moral influence the law can no longer apply ; and there is no 
substitute but the voluntary energies of the nation itself, in asso- 
ciations for charitable contributions and efforts, patronized by 
all denominations of Christians, and by all classes of the commu- 
nity who love their country. We may boast of our civil and 
religious liberty, but they are the fruit of other men's labours in- 
to which we have entered, and the effect of institutions whose 
impulse has been felt long after the hands that reared them have 
mouldered in the grave. It is an impulse, too, that is fast failing, 
and becoming yearly more and more disproportioned to the 
mass that is to be moved by it. Our religious institutions must 
be invigorated, or we are undone. They must move onward* 
with our flowing emigration to the Mississippi must ascend the 
Iron Mountains, and pour their waters of life into the Ocean be- 
yond ; and from the North to the South they must bear sal- 
vation on their waves. In this way the nation can save itself: 
but unless it can be roused to the mighty work, it will, like the 
man among the tombs, become exceeding fierce, and turn upon 
itself its infuriated energies, and pour out its life blood by self- 
inflicted wounds. 

3. We are called upon to give a quickened and extended im- 
pulse to our charitable insitutions. 

These are the providential substitutes for the legal provisions 
of our fathers, now inapplicable by change of circumstances. 
In these the nation must enroll itself spontaneously, and the 
spirit of the Puritans be revived for the preservation of their 
institutions. And uow is the time. With our growing prosperity 



18 

also the fascinations of pleasure, and the means and tempta- 
tions to voluptuousness. Now, unless the salt of the earth contain- 
ed in Christian institutions, can be diffused through the land, the 
mass will putrify. The tide of business and pleasure, bursting 
from our cities, rolling on our sea-coast, and flowing in our ca- 
nals, will soon sweep away the Sabbath, unless a vigorous pub- 
lic sentimf nt can be arrayed for its preservation by the preach- 
ing of the gospel and the power of the Spirit. Let the Sabbath 
schools, then, and Bible classes of our land be multiplied, and 
let Societies for domestic missions rise in every State and Dis- 
trict, and collect and pour out the energies of the nation for its 
moral preservation ; while bibles, and pastors and teachers are 
multiplied, till the knowledge of the Lord covers the land, and 
his saving health is extended to all the people. 

4. All Christian denominations are called upon to co-ope- 
rate for the preservation of religion. 

It is idle to expect, and folly to desire, the amalgamation of all 
denominations into one. The papal effort at universal compre- 
hension has shown what a vast unstimulated, stagnant uniformity 
ivill accomplish ; and God, no doubt, has permitted some vari- 
ant winds of opinion to move upon the fece of the deep, to main- 
tain motion and purity and life. 

We may say, however, that jealousies and ambitious collisions 
between religious denominations should give place to Christian 
courtesy and the magnanimity of an hearty co-operation for the 
glory of God, and the salvation of the world. 

It is in vain to expect, and it would be sinful to desire the ex- 
tinction of any one denomination of Christians. There is room 
for all and work for all ; and there is ample reason why each 
should hail the other as an auxiliary in the work of the Lord. 
The religious principle must be applied throughout the nation, 
and no one denomination can do it. The work demands the 
ceaseless action of each in its own peculiar way, and the mag- 
nanimous co-operation of all for the preservation of the great 
principles of our common Christianity. Nor will such concert of 
action be in vain. It will form extensively a public opinion 
which shall accord with the morality of the gospel whose sanc- 
tions, expressed in the votes of virtuous freemen, shall elevate 
to influence and power men of pure moralitv, and consign the 
irreligious, immoral, and dissolute to merited contempt a law 
which the wicked cannot repeal, and whose penalty they cannot 
evade. All denominations, united and directing their suffrages 
to that end, can check the violation of the Sabbath ; can arrest 
the contagion of intemperance ; can punish duellists in high pla- 
ces, who set at defiance, with shameless notoriety, the laws q( 



19 

God and their country, bringing upon us the contempt of the 
\vorld, and the just judgments of Heaven-. 

5. In this great work of national preservation' and universal 
good will, our civil rulers are particularly called upon to co-op- 
erate. 

Not, as once, in convoking synods, and approving and recom- 
mending creeds ; and not in coercing by law attendance upon 
public worship, or the support of religious institutions. The 
days have gone by in which such interposition is required or can, 
avail. The God of our fathers having given to us' a practical il- 
lustration of the efficacy of religious institutions, sustained by 
law during our minority ; now, in our manhood, puts the price 
into our hands, to be preserved or abandoned on our own re- 
sponsibility. Nor are the Church and the State to be so identifi- 
ed, as that the qualifications for civil office must be the same as 
for membership in that kingdom which is not of this world. Still 
our civil rulers owe to God and their country now, the same il- 
lustrious piety, the same estimation of the doctrines of God's 
word, the same attendance upon the ordinances of the gospel 
and co-operation for their suppport, and the same strict and pure 
morality, which rendered the civil fathers of our land so illustri- 
ous in their character, and so benign in the power of their exam- 
ple upon their own and upon other generations. The example 
of men in official stations rs among the most powerful moral caus- 
es which afflict or bless a community.. If it be good, it descends 
"with cheering power, like the gentle rain upon the earth ; but if 
it be evil, from its bad eminence, it comes down upon the com- 
munity, like the mountain torrent, sweeping away landmarks. 
The righteous mourn under their sway, and t-he wicked creep 
from their hiding-places, and walk on every side, setting their 
mouth against the heavens, and their foot upon all that is sacred 
and holy. The time has come, when the experiment is to be 
made, whether the world is to be emancipated and rendered 
happy, or whether the whole creation shall groan and travail to- 
gether in pain until the final consummation : and the example of 
the rulers of our nation will throw decisive weights into the 
scales, for or against the world's last hope. If they pour con- 
tempt upon the Bible, its doctrines and institutions if they take 
in vain the name of God, or profane wantonly his holy day if 
they concentrate in the capilol and spread abroad through the 
land the infection of their bad example ; "^he whole nation will 
feel it, and the nation die under it. unless the indignant virtue of 
an insulted community shall throw otT the body of death, and by 
a well directed suffrage call to its aid men of talents and of pure 
morality. 






go 

b. To perpetuate our national prosperity and hold up our 
light to the world, our citizens must banish party spirit, and reg^ 
ulate the suffrage of the nation with reference to the preserva- 
tion of its moral purity. 

The temporary collisions of local interest and of ambition 
can never be excluded from such a nation as this, and are not 
to be feared. It is those deep-rooted and permanent divisions, 
extending through the land, rousing the feelings and arraying 
the energies of one part of the nation in keen collision with the 
other, and perpetuating prejudice and strife, from generation to 
generation, which threaten the existence of our republican in- 
stitutions. Through one such fiery trial we have passed unde- 
stroyed. though by no means uninjured 5 and no patriot of the 
present generation would willingly, I trust, behold our country 
placed in such jeopardy 3g .'.in. Despotic governments may pass 
in safety through popular commotions such as would shake down 
the pillars of a republic. The mobs of England, which, in the 
presence of the military power, are but the gambols of a kid 
within the scope of the lion's paws, would be, in this country, 
as the letting out of waters. There is no possibility of freedom 
in this bad world, without so much intelligence and moral prin- 
ciple as shall create an efficient public sentiment in favour of 
law and good order. 

But party spirit prostrates every thing which is venerable 
and sacred within the sphere of its commotion. It directs the 
attention of the people from their own common interests to the 
means of gaining ends to which prejudice and passion may 
direct then* ; and the attention of the government from the pub- 
lic good to the means of its own political ascendancy. It ren- 
ders a wise and comprehensive policy impossible ; for party 
spirit has no magnanimity, no conscience, no consistency, to 
withhold it from resisting as rea'lily what is wise as what is un- 
wise, and its victories are too transient to admit of much pros- 
pective wisdom. It is eminently hostile to the laws which watch 
over the morals of the nation ; for who will execute them when 
partizans on both sides fear that they may feel the consequen- 
ces of fidelity at the very next election. Too often, from the 
nearly balanced state of parties, the most worthless portion of 
the community actually hold the sway in the elections, even in a 
state of society comparatively virtuous, occasioning impunity 
in the violation of law, and clothing with political consequence, 
and too often surrounding with adulation, men whom our fathers 
would have expelled from good society, and sent to the work- 
house or the pillory. It tends to destroy in society all distinc- 
tions of talent, and learning, and moral character, as qualification* 






for office ; while it reconciles the people, upon the plea of tie* 
cessity, to such preposterous sacrifices of conscience and com* 
mon sense as they would never consent to, unstimulated by its 
madness. Indeed, in all but the name, it rears beneath the 
forms of freedom, a real and most terrific despotism. For every 
party has a soul, some master spirit who, without a crown and 
sceptre, governs with absolute sway. He is surrounded by a 
nobility, each of whom is commissioned to govern the public 
opinion within his sphere, and bring his retainers to the polls, to 
subserve implicitly the interests of the king and of the aristocra- 
cy. It needs only to kindle the watch-fire, and every clansman 
is at his post ; and argument might as well avail against bullets 
in the day of battle, as in these determined contests of parties. 
There is no remedy for this state of things, but that intelligence 
which qualifies the. people to understand their rights, interests, 
and duties ; and that calmness of feeling to which the public 
mind, undisturbed by partizan efforts, will not fail to come ; and 
that deep conviction of the importance of moral purity, which 
shall turn the expectations of the people from party men and 
party measures, to the application of moral power, by the insti- 
tutions of religion, and the interposition of the Holy Spirit. 

Multitudes of Christians and patriots have long since aban- 
doned party politics, and, not knowing what to do, have aban- 
doned almost the exercise of suffrage. This is wrong. An en- 
lightened and virtuous suffrage may, by system and concentration, 
become one of the most powerful means of promoting national 
purity and morality ; as the suffrage from which the influence 
of conscience and virtue is withdrawn, cannot fail to be disastrous. 
While then, as freemen, we remove one temptation to hypocrisy, 
by dispensing with a profession of religion as a qualification for 
office, and exclude all occasions of jealousy, by bestowing our 
votes without reference to Christian denominations ; let all chris- 
tians and all patriots exercise their rights as electors with an in- 
flexible regard to moral character ; and let the duellist and the 
sabbath-breaker, and the drunkard, and the licentious, find the 
doors of honour barred, and the heights of ambition defended 
against them by hosts of determined freemen ; and the moral 
effect will be great. The discrimination by suffrage will t>xort 
upon the youth of our country a most salutary restraint, and up- 
on dissolute ambitious men a powerful reforming influence. Let 
every freeman, then, who would perpetuate the liberty and hap- 
piness of his country, and transmit to his descendants of distant 
generations the precious legacy which our fathers have sent 
down to us, enquire concerning the candidate for whom he is 
solicited to vote, is he an enemy to the Bible, or to the doc- 






ftines and institutions of the Gospel ; is he a duellist, or atf 
intemperate man, or a Sabbath-breaker, or dissolute, or dishon- 
est ? and if in any of these respects, he be disqualified, with- 
hold his vote, and give it to a better man and it will go far to 
retrieve the declensions which have taken place, and to render 
righteousness and peace the stability of our times. 

And HOW, what shall we say to these things? Are they the 
dreams of a fervid imagination, or are they the words of truth 
and soberness ? Will our blessings be perpetuated, or shall ours 
be added to the ruined republics that have been ? Are we as- 
sembled to-day to bestow funeral honours upon our departefl 
glory, or with united counsels and hearts to strengthen the things 
that remain ? Weak indeed must be the faith that wavers now, 
and sinks amid waves less terrific, and prospects more cheering, 
than any which our fathers ever saw. Were it dark even 
as midnight, and did the waves run high, and dash loud and an- 
gry around us, still our faith would not be dismayed : still with 
our fathers we would believe, " Qui transtulit sustinet ;" and 
still would we rejoice in the annunciation of Him that sitteth upon 
the throne, " Behold I create all things new." Our anchor will 
not fail our bark will not founder; for the means of preserva- 
tion will be used, and the God of our fathers will make them ef- 
fectual. The memory of our fathers is becoming more precious. 
Their institutions are commanding a higher estimation. Deeper 
convictions are felt of the importance of religious institutions ; 
and more extended and vigorous exertions are made to balance 
the temptations of prosperity by moral powers. Christian* 
are ceasing from their jealousies and concentrating their ener- 
gies. The nation is moved, and beginning to enrol itself in va- 
rious forms of charitable association, for the extension of religion 
at home and abroad. Philosophers and patriots, statesmen and 
men of wealth, are beginning to feel that it is righteousness only 
which exalteth a nation, and to give to the work of moral reno- 
vation their arguments, the power of their example, and the im- 
pulse of their charity. And the people, weary of political col- 
lision, are disposed at length to build again those institutions 
which in times of contention, they had either neglected or trod- 
den down. Such an array of moral influence as is now compre- 
hended in the great plan of charitable operations, was never 
before brought to bear upon the nation. It moves onward, at- 
tended by fervent supplications, and followed by glorious and 
"unceasing effusions of the Holy Spirit. The god of this world 
feels the shock of the onset, and has commenced his retreat. 
Jesus Christ is going on from conquering and to conquer ; nor 
will he turn from His purpose, or cease from His work, until He 
hath made all things new. 



- 



THE PRESUMPTION OF SKEPTICAL AND CARKLESS CONTEMNERS OF RELIGION. 



SERMON 

PREACHED IN 

THE MEETING HOUSE OF THE SOUTH PARISH, ANDOVEB, 

. 

ON THE 
LAST SABBATH IN NOV. 1838. 



BY EBENEZER PORTER, D. D. 

President of the Theol. Sem. Andover. 



Published by request of the hearers. 



ANDOVER: 
PUBLISHED BY MARK NEWMAN. 

1829. 



ADVERTISEMENT. 

Whatever of peculiarity, intelligent readers of this sermon may perceive, in its subject and 
course of thought, may perhaps be explained by the following simple statement. It wag 
written while the author was on a journey, in a distant part of the country; and was design- 
edly adapted to a class of hearers, who were accustomed to parry all the solemn appeals of 
religion, by alleging, not their certainty that it is false, but their doubts of its truth. Pro- 
bably there are men, in all times and places, to whom the admonitions of the sermon may be 
appropriate. In this view it was, in the customary interchange of labors on the sabbath, 
preached to the respected congregation, many of whom have united in requesting that it 
should be published. 



SERMON. 



2 PETER III. 4. 

Where is the promise of his coming ? For, since the fathers fell asleep, all things con- 
tinue as they were, from the beginning of the creation. 

THE Apostle Peter wrote his two pastoral letters, to com- 
fort and establish the Christians, who had been widely dis- 
persed, by the violence of persecution. He warned these 
Christians not to expect that the trials of the godly will cease, 
while hatred to truth and holiness is so predominant in the 
world. But he informed them that this hostility will assume a 
form of opposition, to which good men had not been accustom- 
ed, and of which they needed to be forewarned. 

What then is this opposition ? Not chains, and dungeons, 
and gibbets. Over these, faith and patience had won a thou- 
sand triumphs. Not arguments. From these, truth had noth- 
ing to fear. Reasoning is not the armour in which these op- 
posers of the gospel would array themselves, but scoffing. 
" There shall come scoffers." 

The language of these men corresponds with the bold li- 
centiousness of their character. " Where is the promise of his 
coming ?" This is an expression of profane incredulity, res- 
pecting the doctrine of a final judgment, and an eternal retri- 
bution. The phrase " his coming," denoted the general be- 
lief of the church respecting this subject. The Apostle ex- 
plains and limits its meaning, when he adds the dreadfully sub- 
lime declaration ; " But the day of the Lord shall come, as a 
thief in the night, in which the heavens shall pass away with a 



great noise, the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth 
also, and the works that are therein, shall be burnt up." 

Jesting, so far as it is indulged by reasonable men, is al- 
ways confined to subjects of little importance. The plague, 
that depopulates cities ; the hurricane, that heaves the ocean 
into mountain billows ; the volcano, that pours out its rivers of 
flame, are regarded, by the pious and the profane, with im- 
pressions, not of levity, but of majesty and awe. He that could 
feel the concussion of an earthquake, and hear the crash of 
falling domes and towers ; or he that could look at the blaz- 
ing crater of Etna, and feel merry, would not be thought a 
sane man ; certainly not a man of good sense. What then 
must be thought of that man's understanding and heart, who 
can make the last judgment a topic of ridicule ! 

These cavilling unbelievers make the demand of Christians, 
" Where is the promise of his coming ? for since the fathers 
fell asleep, all things continue as they were, from the beginning 
of the creation." The sun rises and sets, the sea ebbs and 
flows, the seasons perform their circuits, as in ages past. How 
do we know that the end of the world, and the retribution of 
which you warn us, will ever prove a reality ? Here it is as- 
sumed, as a practical principle, that our doubts concerning a 
revealed truth, authorise us to treat it with indifference ; a prin- 
ciple that is utterly unreasonable, and that has proved the ruin 
of thousands. For he who merely doubts, or coldly admits the 
truth of Christianity, and yet acts as if he knew it to be false, 
is chargeable with extreme presumption ; because, in a case 
of such everlasting moment, a thousand doubts are not to be 
laid in the balance against a single possibility that it is true. 

Such is the subject before us. In the present discussion of 
it, observe, my hearers, I do not mean to say, or to intimate 
that there is any room for rational doubt concerning a state of 
eternal retribution. To affirm the probability of such a state, 
would be saying no more than most skeptical minds admit, and 



to others, it would be using very feeble language ; because its 
absolute certainty may be proved, and has a thousand times 
been proved, by evidence that is perfectly conclusive. 

But I wish, for once, to place this subject on a foundation 
that precludes all dispute. Admitting the utmost that cavilling 
or careless men can allege, still it is possible that an endless 
state of happiness or misery awaits us all, beyond the grave. 
And on the ground of this possibility, I maintain the charge of 
daring and blind presumption, against those who treat the gos- 
pel with indifference. To make this conduct reasonable, they 
must be certain that this life will not be followed by an eternal 
state of rewards and punishments ? Can they be certain of this ? 

Let us examine this question. 

Is there any absurdity, in the doctrine of an eternal retri- 
bution, as it has commonly been believed by Christians ? Is it 
inconsistent with any established truths that come within the 
province of our understandings ? 

In the FIRST place, is it inconsistent with the perfections of 
God 1 ? 

With which of his perfections is it inconsistent ? Not with 
his power ; for the same power that could give men existence, 
can certainly uphold that existence ; and can render them hap- 
py or miserable, according to their character. 

Not with his wisdom ; for there is no conceivable motive 
that could induce an all wise God to create rational beings, 
barely to live, and act, and suffer, a few days, on this earth, 
and then sink into eternal oblivion. 

Not with his justice ; for who can doubt the equity of his 
appointing " a day in which he will judge the world in right- 
eousness ; a day when " all that are in their graves shall hear 
his voice, and shall come forth, they that have done good, unto 
the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the 
resurrection of damnation." 

The present distributions of Providence, are by no means 



6 

according to the characters of men. The wicked are often 
seen in great prosperity, and the righteous in poverty and sor- 
row. These unequal allotments have always been viewed, by 
reflecting men, as suggesting an argument in favour of a per- 
fect and unalterable retribution hereafter. 

In the SECOND place, is this doctrine inconsistent with the 
constitution of the human mind? 

The soul of man is distinct from every thing which we 
know to be perishable. Matter, however combined or modifi- 
ed, has no intelligence. The clock, with its curious and use- 
ful mechanism, is as void of reason, memory, or consciousness, 
as any other portion of brass or wood. That thought is dis- 
tinct from matter, is indeed so plain a point, that it may seem 
needless to assert it gravely from the pulpit. But from this 
plain principle, an important conclusion follows. If the soul is 
something entirely distinct from the body, then it did not derive 
its thinking properties from its union to the body ; and the ceas- 
ing of that union can have no tendency to destroy the existence 
or faculties of the soul. The body has no superiority to com- 
mon dust, except that it is the temporary residence of an im- 
mortal spirit. When this spirit departs, the tenement of clay 
falls. But there is no reason whatever to conclude that the 
soul becomes extinct with the dissolution of the body. 

Besides, the powers of the soul, when not obstructed by its 
connexion with the body, increase in strength. As man advan- 
ces from infancy to maturity, his mental faculties expand, and 
become more and more vigorous. And there is no evidence 
that the decay and decrepitude of age result at all from the con- 
stitution of the mind, aside from its connexion with a decaying 
body. This suggests the sublime thought of an endless pro- 
gress in the powers of the soul, when it is released from the 
clogs which here impede its advances. Who can tell to what 
extent these narrow faculties may be enlarged, at some un- 
known period hereafter ? and consequently what a capacious 



vessel every human soul will become, to be filled with happi- 
ness or misery ? 

In the THIRD place, is this doctrine inconsistent with the stat- 
ed operations of Providence, or the analogy of the world"} 

From this source certainly, we derive no positive evidence 
of annihilation. We know of nothing, which has ever existed,, 
and has absolutely ceased to exist. Animals and vegetables die 
continually, to give life to others. The grass springs from the 
dust, the ox feeds upon the grass, man feeds upon the ox, 
worms feed upon the man, and these turn to dust again. The 
oak derives its nourishment from the ground, till it decays where 
it stood, and mingles with the dust again ; or perhaps becomes- 
part of a ship, and mingles with the dust of a distant continent. 
In this wonderful system of operation, the same matter chan- 
ges its qualities, its mode of existence, its place, its appearance, 
but does not cease to be. Doubtless omnipotence may annihi- 
late, as well as create ; but the analogy of the external world 
furnishes no proof of annihilation. We see material bodies lose 
their forms, but not their existence. The death of plants in the 
winter, is succeeded by a sort of resurrection in the spring. 

These remarks are not offered to demonstrate the doctrine 
of immortality, but to show that this doctrine cannot be proved 
to be impossible or improbable, by any arguments drawn from 
the general system of Providence. On the contrary, without 
any aid from the poet's fancy, the analogy of the world strongly 
intimates, that the human body, in some unknown but renovated 
form, will awake from the tomb, and be reunited to the soul, in 
a state of endless joy or suffering. 

In the FOURTH place, is this doctrine repugnant to the best 
feelings of men, or the dictates of sound reason ? 

Sin may indeed render it the sad interest of some, not to sur- 
vive the grave. But to all men, immortality is, in itself, desirable, 
and annihilation dreadful. This strong and universal propensity, 
is proof, at least, that there is nothing in the doctrine of a future 



8 

life, repugnant to our feelings. Nor is it repugnant to reason ; 
for it has in fact been generally believed, among all nations, 
barbarous as well as refined. Distinct traces of it are seen, 
mingled indeed with much absurdity, in their funeral rites ; 
and in their systems of philosophy, and poetry, and legislation. 
That the worst of men have not been able to divest themselves 
of this common apprehension, is evident from their trepidation 
in disastrous events, and at the hour of death. Why was Bel- 
shazzar terrified at the sight of a man's hand, that came forth, and 
wrote upon the wall of his palace ? The monarch of Baby- 
lon, encompassed with guards, and ramparts, surely did not fear 
injury from men ; nor could he read a word that was written. 
Why then did he tremble ? Why did his face turn pale, and 
his knees smite together ? It was the secret testimony of his 
own bosom, that a message from the invisible world, could im- 
port no good to a man of his character. It was conscience, stir- 
ring within him, and anticipating the award of a more dread 
tribunal. For the same reason did the Roman Governor trem- 
ble, as Paul reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judg- 
ment to come. 

Some of the greatest philosophers and moralists among the 
ancient heathen, expressed very noble sentiments concerning 
the doctrine of immortality, by saying that, " flesh, and blood, 
and limbs, are only tools for the soul to work with, and no more 
a part of a man, than an axe or a plane, is a part of a carpen- 
ter.* 

A distinguished writer says ; " Of all the heathen worthies, 
Socrates was the most guarded, dispassionate, and composed. 
Yet this great master of temper was angry, and angry at his 

* Xenophon represents Cyrus, surrounded by his family, in his last moments, as saying, 
" Think not, my beloved children, when I am gone from your sight, that I have ceased to ex- 
ist ; for even now, you see not my soul, yet you know, from its operations, that it does exist. 
I can never believe that the soul, which in a dying body did live, on its leaving that body, 
either dies, or lose* its intelligence." 



9 

Jast hour, and angry at his friend, and angry for what de- 
served acknowledgement ; angry for a right and tende: in- 
stance of true friendship towards him. What could be the 
cause ? It was for his honour. It was truly a noble, though 
perhaps a too punctilious regard for immortality. For when 
his friend asked him, with such an affectionate regard as be- 
came a friend, where shall we. deposit your remains % it was 
resented by Socrates, as implying the dishonorable supposition, 
that he could be so mean, as to have regard for any thing, even 
in himself, that was not immortal." 

The doctrine of an eternal hereafter then, cannot be shown 
to be impossible by any arguments drawn from the character 
of God, the constitution of the human mind, the analogies of 
providence, nor from the feelings, and reason of men, for these 
bear a concurrent testimony in its favour. 

Is there any other source of argument, from which it can 
be proved that the truth of this doctrine is impossible ? Clear- 
ly none. Indeed, that all men do regard an eternal state of ret- 
ribution as being possible, is beyond question ; because no one 
ever attempted seriously to prove that it is not possible. 

Let me repeat the remark here, that I have designedly fore- 
borne to take the high ground, which I am authorised to take 
on this subject. The appeal might have been made at once to 
the Bible, where " life and immortality are brought to light j" 
where all questions of this sort are settled forever, by an 
overwhelming flood of evidence. But I have chosen at this time, 
to arraign careless men, at the threshold of their own system, and 
to show that, on principles which they must admit, and do admit 
they are beside themselves, in neglecting for a moment, " the 
great salvation." 

On this ground, I stand, my hearers, as an ambassador of 
Christ, and invite your attention to this subject. No one, in his 
right mind, will deny, that an endless state of happiness or mis- 
2 



ery hereafter, is a possible thing. How then ought we to con- 
duct ? What manner of persons ought we to be, when the 
present hour, that we devote to consider this subject, may be 
to us the final hour of probation. There is but one alternative. 
Reason and conscience decide, that we must either embrace 
the gospel, as Christians and prudent men ; or close our eyes 
in blind and bold presumption, and rush on our doom ! 

The reasoning adopted in this discourse, leads to results, 
which are especially interesting to two classes of men. 

1st, To those, who treat the gospel with indifference, because 
they entertain doubts of its truth. I say doubts, for this term is 
applicable to all that variety of opinion, that is found betwixt 
confirmed infidelity, and the transient scruples of occasional 
skepticism. Among all those who have openly opposed the 
gospel, no one probably was ever found who could pretend to 
have studied it, with that impartiality and seriousness, which the 
subject demands. Few such men, indeed, can pretend to have 
studied it at all. And hence, at the approach of death, their 
scheme gives way under them. Conscience wakes from its 
slumber, at that honest hour, and from the same lips that ridi- 
culed the faith of Christians, extorts a reluctant confession of 
its truth. Follow the man that trifled with religion, and ask him 
on his dying bed, did he know, in the season of profane levity, 
did he know that Christianity is a fiction ? Had he certainty 
of this ? What has become of that certainty ? Why does he 
tremble now, at the thoughts of an hereafter ? Ah, he delud- 
ed himself with the show of argument, that will not bear the re- 
view of his own rnind, in a season like this. He rejected the 
foundation, which God hath laid in Zion ; and laid one for 
himself, that crumbles to atoms, the moment he looks into the 
grave. 

The boldest infidelity is at bottom, I say again, if it can be 
called a system at all, only a system of uncertainty and dark- 



ness. It rejects the gospel, but provides no substitute. It 
leaves the dying man without one ray of light, to console his 
heart, without one solid spot, in the universe, on which to set 
his foot, or to rest his hopes. 

Hence those dread misgivings, to which skeptical minds are 
subject, in moments of solemn reflection, which they cannot 
altogether escape. Byron, in all the loftiness of his pride, and 
all the hardihood of his unbelief, had many a secret apprehen- 
sion that the Bible, after all, is true. Hence his faith in omens, 
and the vacillations of his mind, from its admixture of creduli- 
ty with infidelity. The cloud that hung over his hereafter, 
rolled back upon him, with its dreary forebodings, as he stood, 
and looked down the dark and fathomless abyss before him. 

The Christian stands on firm ground. His faith rests im- 
movably on the testimony of Him that cannot lie. What pru- 
dent man would forsake such ground, to stand on the basis of 
contingence and hypothesis, every vestige of which is swept 
from under him, by one short argument of a great writer ; 
" Place infinite happiness in one scale, against infinite misery 
in the other. If the worst that can happen to the believer, 
should be mistake, be the best that can happen to the unbeliev- 
er, should he be right ; who without madness, would run the ven- 
ture f Who would choose to place himself within the possibili- 
ty of infinite misery ?"* 

But what shall we say of those, who doubt on a lower scale ; 
and treat religion with indifference, on account of occasional 
scruples concerning its truth ? What shall we say of those, who 
balance probabilities, on this subject, according to what they 

* Would it not be madness" says Bishop Butler, "for a man to forsake a safe road, and 
prefer one in which he knows there is an even chance he should lose his life, though there 
were an even chance likewise, of his getting safe through it .' Yet there are people absurd 
enough, to take the supposed doubtfulness of religion, for the same thing as a proof of its 
falsehood. This shows how infinitely unreasonable skeptical men are, with respect to re- 
ligion, and that they as really lay aside their reason, upon this subject, as the most extrava- 
gant enthusiasts." 



12 

may happen to hear, for or against religion, or according to the 
numbers of those who embrace or reject it ? We may say, they 
disregard the plainest principles of common prudence. In any 
concern of temporal magnitude, they would act more wisely. 
Perhaps there is some passage in the Bible, which they have 
never seen explained, to their satisfaction. Perhaps some 
preacher has advanced a sentiment, which they do not compre- 
hend, or do not believe. Perhaps some professor of religion 
has acted unworthily. What then ! What if a thousand things 
of this sort, could be alleged ? Is Christianity therefore un- 
true, or unimportant ? What if the majority of the world have 
neglected this religion ? What if its professors and its minis- 
ters', have been imperfect ? What if scoffing tongues and scof- 
fing pens have made light of it ? In all this, is there any thing 
like demonstration of its falsehood f Yet, here immortal be- 
ings stand ; stand, doubting, trifling slumbering over this great 
subject ; stand, perhaps, searching for objections, on the last, 
trembling verge of a dread hereafter ; while, according to the 
conviction of their own understandings, and the confession of 
their own lips, all is at stake for eternity ! 

What would you say of him, who should build his house on 
the sandy brink of a river, which had been overflowed, for fifty 
successive years ? Suppose he is not certain that it will be 
overflowed again ; yet his house would be safer in another 
place. What would you say of him, who should lie down to 
sleep, on the margin of the sea, where the tide has risen, every 
day, for centuries ? Suppose he is not certain that it will rise 
there again ; yet he would be safer to sleep in another place. 
Noah, being warned of God, built an ark, to the saving of his 
house. Surely he had good reason to believe God ; but what if 
there had been no flood ? Would not the condition of Noah 
and his family have been as good as that of other men ? Lot, 
being told by an angel that Sodom would be destroyed, fled 
from the city. Surely he had good reason to believe that an 



13 

angel had spoken the truth ; but what if there had been no 
storm of fire ? Would he not have been as safe as his neigh- 
bors ? Joseph, apprized of a seven years' famine, laid up vast 
stores of corn. What if there had been no famine ? Would 
he not have fared as well as they who had no store ? The 
Christian, warned of the wrath to come, has fled to the Saviour, 
and made the Judge his friend. He has acted wisely. Reve- 
lation decides that he has acted wisely. Reason decides that 
he has acted wisely. Eternity will decide that he has acted 
wisely ; and that he could not have acted otherwise without 
madness. Beware, then, ye who stigmatize his faith, as blind 
credulity, beware, lest that came upon you which was spoken 
by the prophets ; " Behold, ye despisers, and wonder, and per- 
ish." 

2. This subject offers a solemn admonition to those, who 
profess to admit, without doubting, that the gospel is true, and 
yet treat it with indifference. 

Probably this class, in all Christian communities, is very nu- 
merous. Perhaps it includes every impenitent hearer in this as- 
sembly. It has been shown, by a train of reasoning, satisfacto- 
ry I trust to every mind, that they who admit an eternal state of 
retribution to be barely possible, are guilty of great presumption, 
in treating the gospel with indifference. 

What then ought we to think, what must we think, when 
we see immortal beings admit the certainty of such a state, 
with the same cold insensibility, as they assent to any customary 
and momentary trifle ? To admit this certainty, is only yield- 
ing to overwhelming evidence ; it is the part of rational beings. 
But to admit it with insensibility, is the part of madmen. 

" Surely in vain is the net spread in the sight of any bird." 
The inferior animals, guided only by instinct, where they sus- 
pect danger, take the alarm and fly. But man, immortal man, 
will not consider. Though the gospel remonstrates, though 
heaven invites, though his conscience twinges at every step, 



14 

and his ears ring with warnings, he rushes downward, without 
fear or foresight, downward, with his eyes open, to everlasting 
destruction ! O dread preeminence, that puts him in a con- 
dition to provoke the fiercest wrath of the Almighty ! Awful 
pinnacle of mercy, on which God his Maker has placed him, and 
from which he madly plunges himself into a deeper damnation ! 
My dear impenitent hearers, think on this subject. Aliens from 
the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenant of 
promise, listen to the call of heaven. Live no longer " with- 
out hope, and without God." Did you know the gospel to be 
false, then might you find some refuge for indifference. But you 
do not know this, you will never know this. And besides, 1 tell 
you in this solemn place, in the name of God I tell you, the day is 
coming when not a doubt will remain on this subject, in all the 
universe. The truth of the gospel will be proved, beyond the pos- 
sibility of question by the voice of the archangel, and the trump 
of God ; proved by the noise of dissolving elements ; proved 
by the majesty of the judge, descending and enthroned in the 
splendors of omnipotence. Yes, that day will furnish evidence 
that the gospel is true, which will wither scoffing tongues, and 
wring even hearts of stone with agony. Then wo to despisers 
of Christ and his gospel ; wo to careless neglecters of the great 
salvation ; wo to all that have trifled through time j they must 
tremble and mourn forever. 

Hearken, therefore, to the voice of heavenly admonition ; 
" He that findeth me, findeth life : but he that despiseth me, 
wrongeth his own soul." 



<Hijcctfom against the <os.pcl refutetr. 



SERMON 



PREACHED MARCH 4, 1829, AT THE INSTALLATION 



OF THE 



REV. JOHN BROWN, D. D. 



AS PASTOR OF 



PINE STREET CHURCH, 



BOSTON. 



BY DANIEL DANA, D. D. 

Pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church, JYewburyport. 



Boston : 

T. R. MARVIN, PRINTER, 32, CONGRESS STREET. 

1829. 



SERMON. 



Romans, i. 15, 16. 

SO, AS MUCH AS IN ME IS, I AM READY TO PREACH THE GOSPEL 
TO YOU THAT ARE AT ROME ALSO. FOR I AM NOT ASHAMED OF 
THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 

THE great apostle had traversed sea and land, to spread 
the gospel of his adored Redeemer. Many a desolate region, 
and many a populous city had witnessed his unparalleled 
exertions in the holy cause. But as yet, he had never visited 
imperial Rome. Not that he overlooked that splendid, and 
populous, and guilty city. Not that he would treat it with 
neglect. He had repeatedly purposed to pay it a personal 
visit. Nor had repeated disappointments damped the ardor 
of his wishes. " I long to see you," says the good man, 
" that I may impart to you some spiritual gift, to the end that 
ye may be established." " I am debtor both to the Greeks, 
and to the Barbarians ; both to the wise, and to the unwise. 
So," he adds, " as much as in me is, I am ready to preach 
the gospel to you that are at Rome also. For I am not 
ashamed of the gospel of Christ." 

The apostle had proclaimed the messages of heaven 
among the untaught and uncivilized ; and encountered the 
fierceness of their opposition. But it was among the polished 
inhabitants of Athens, among learned civilians and philoso- 
phers, that he had met the keenest shafts of ridicule and 
scorn. He well knew, that amidst the highest cultivation of 
intellect, and refinement of manners, the heart, still unsubdued 



to the love of truth, might only be stimulated and armed to 
new hostility against it. Such hostility he might naturally 
expect in the city of Rome. There were the great, the 
opulent, the luxurious, the learned, the philosophic, and the 
proud, who, if they agreed in nothing else, would too proba- 
bly agree in despising and rejecting the gospel of Christ. 
But, says he, I am not ashamed of this gospel. I know that 
it is the power of God to salvation. I know that those who 
despise it, need it not less than others, and must perish 
without it. I know that there is a power which can bring 
even them to see its beauty, -and taste its blessedness. And 
I know that the very things which provoke their contempt, 
constitute its chief excellence and glory. I will therefore 
preach it wherever I have access. I will preach it boldly, 
and plainly, and faithfully. I will preach it without softening 
any of its most offensive features. It was a noble resolu- 
tion; worthy of an apostle, and worthy of every Christian 
minister. 

The passage, viewed in this light, calls our attention to the 
leading objections which have been raised, in every age, 
against the gospel ; particularly those objections which it has 
encountered in regions of learning and refinement ; and which 
have frequently proved repulsive to cultivated and reflecting 
minds. To suggest and refute some of these objections, is 
the design of the present discourse. 

The first objection of this character which I shall state, is 
the unparalleled simplicity of the gospel. Here is a book, 
professing to corne from God, and to give information of the 
highest possible moment to man ; information such as the 
profoundest sages and philosophers never could impart. 
Here is a scheme of salvation, claiming to have emanated 
from eternal wisdom ; and to solve all the doubts, to remove 
all the difficulties, and provide for all the exigencies, of the 
case. We open the volume ; we examine the scheme ; and 
what do we find . ? No parade of philosophy ; no investiga- 



tions of science ; no labored discussion of abstract principles ; 
no formal distribution of topics ; nothing, in short, remotely 
resembling a system of theology, or ethics, framed by man. 
All is plain, artless, unstudied, unadorned. A few simple 
points may be said to comprise the whole system. The 
incarnation of the Son of God ; our redemption by his blood ; 
our sanctification by his Spirit ; our becoming interested in 
these stupendous blessings by faith ; the unfailing connexion 
of this faith with universal holiness, with all pious affections, 
and all virtuous conduct these principles, as obvious as 
they are important, constitute the essence of the grand scheme 
of our salvation. He who rightly understands them, pos- 
sesses the key to the whole gospel, and to the whole system 
of its religion. 

These principles, so simple in themselves, are conveyed to 
us with the utmost plainness of manner. The God of heaven, 
in his word, has mercifully adapted himself to the feebleness 
of our capacities, and to this infancy of our existence. Like 
a kind father, lisping with his children, he has given us 
heavenly truths in earthly language. Listening to his instruc- 
tions with a childlike docility, we may be assured of finding 
the path to heaven. We need not fear "a mistake in any 
essential point, either of truth or duty. 

Shall this simplicity of the gospel offend and disgust us ; or 
shall it fill us with admiration and gratitude ? Shall it be 
viewed as a defect, or an excellency of the highest order ? 
Does it not instamp on the gospel the character of divinity ? 
Does it not proclaim that the Author of the universe is the 
Author of the Bible too ? In the works of man, an expen- 
sive and complicated machinery is frequently employed to 
accomplish a few inconsiderable results. While in the works 
of God, the most stupendous and diversified effects are fre- 
quently seen to spring from the operation of a single cause. 
It is in a few simple laws which govern matter and motion, 
that all the amazing and endless phenomena of this fair uni- 



verse originate. Thus the Author of nature retires behind 
his own work, and permits himself to be seen only in the 
astonishing and ever varying results of his secret and silent 
operation. In contemplating the wonderful law of attraction, 
which pervades the natural world, we are struck with nothing 
so much as the simplicity of the principle, combined with the 
immense extent and variety of its effects. How signally, in 
these respects, does it resemble that principle of heavenly love 
which pervades every department of the plan of our redemp- 
tion, and which binds together the universe of holy souls. 

One thing is most evident. Had the gospel come to us in 
an abstract and philosophic form ; had it abounded with those 
investigations and abstrusities which please men of specula- 
tive minds ; it would have been wholly unadapted to the 
generality of the race. Its grand object would have been 
lost. Most men want the talents, or the leisure, or the incli- 
nation, for subtile and laborious investigations. But they 
have minds to be informed. They have consciences and 
hearts to be addressed. And they have souls to be saved. 
Almost all the ancient religions mocked the great mass of 
their votaries with senseless fables, and reserved their secrets 
for philosophers. Christianity knows no such odious distinc- 
tions. It looks with equal eye on all. But it delights to 
descend to the lowest forms of humanity; to adapt itself to 
all their weaknesses and wants. The meek and lowly Saviour 
reveals the choicest secrets of his religion to babes ; that is, 
to the docile and humble, however feeble their capacities, 
however unfurnished their minds. 

But while we confess the unparalleled simplicity of the 
gospel, and glory in it, we deny that it is a meagre, uninstruc- 
tive system. It is rich in truths equally profound and sub- 
lime. Each of its great principles, simple as it is in itself, 
opens boundless sources of thought, and leads the inquiring 
mind into a world of wonders. " We account the Scriptures of 
God," says the great Newton, " the most sublime philosophy." 



Christianity, we admit, has its mysteries. And this has 
been a topic of complaint, even with those who, in the same 
breath, have complained of its simplicity. Let us attend, for 
a moment, to this objection. 

That the gospel contains not only many things which 
unaided reason could never have discovered, but likewise 
many things which, when revealed, our minds cannot fully 
comprehend, is readily admitted. In this respect, the gospel 
is precisely similar to all the other works of God. Will any 
one deny that creation, in all its parts, abounds with incom- 
prehensibles ? Within and without us; above, beneath and 
around ; in the vast and the minute of nature ; in the animate 
and inanimate worlds ; in the vegetable and mineral king- 
doms ; in our own bodies and souls ; in their intimate con- 
nexion and mutual sympathy ; we find exhaustless, inexpli- 
cable wonders. And shall the Book of God alone, that 
emanation of eternal wisdom, be entirely level to our 
capacities ? 

Other considerations bear still more directly on the point. 
The Bible comes to teach us something of God ; something, 
too, which we have not learned before, and which nature 
could not teach. How natural, indeed how inevitable, that 
this something should be that of which we find in our minds 
no archetype. How natural, that it should be perfectly new 
and astonishing utterly without the range of our previous 
thoughts and conceptions. And if, even when the object is 
presented, it is found too mighty for our feeble minds to 
grasp, shall this be thought strange ? Shall it be made a 
reason for disbelief ? We may then commence atheists at 
once. For natural religion, in presenting a God self-existent, 
eternal and omnipresent, places before us an object which we 
can neither distinctly conceive, nor fully comprehend. 

And farther : the Bible comes to relieve us in a desperate 
case in a case where all the efforts of reason, and the re- 
sources of philosophy, leave us without remedy and without 



3 

hope. We are sinners. And if sinners are saved, then 
either the divine law and government and glory must sink, or 
their salvation must come in a method strange, unsuspected, 
surprising, mysterious. This last is the real fact. The 
mysteries of the gospel, what are they, but so many vast 
resources of the Deity so many grand achievements of infi- 
nite wisdom and love and condescension, in behalf of a 
ruined race ? 

Suppose the subjects of an earthly empire were perishing, 
by thousands, of some dire disease a disease so singular as 
to admit no relief, unless administered by one in the same 
lowly station with the sufferers. Suppose the sovereign him- 
self, touched with their woes, should abandon his palace, and 
concealing his person beneath the meanest attire, should visit 
their hospitals and their hovels ; should familiarize himself 
with the most disgusting forms of their wretchedness, that he 
might give health to the diseased, and life to the dying. 
What celebrations could equal such condescension ? And 
what would be the ingratitude of refusing to such a sovereign 
his proper dignities and honors ; of denying that he ever pos- 
sessed them ; and this under the pretence that the condescen- 
sion was incredible was absolutely impossible ? 

To believe what we cannot completely comprehend, and 
to act on that belief, is neither irrational, nor at variance with 
daily and universal practice. Of the proper nature of dis- 
eases, of medicines, and of the process of cure, physicians 
know almost nothing ; and the great mass of mankind, abso- 
lutely nothing at all. Yet men know themselves to be dis- 
eased ; remedies are prescribed and applied ; and cures are 
effected ; just as if all were plain and understood. And if 
reason be the highest prerogative of man, the highest preroga- 
tive of reason itself is to believe whatever the God of truth has 
revealed, and to believe it on his simple testimony. 

It is objected against the gospel, that it is, throughout, of a 
humbling character and tendency. It frowns indignantly on 



every form of human pride. It strips us of that self-valuation in 
which some have placed the essence of dignity, and' of virtue. 

All this we readily admit. The gospel is indeed a hum- 
bling system. It originated in the free and self-moved mercy 
of God. Every where it takes it for granted that man is a 
sinner, a rebel against his Maker ; that sin is a tremendous 
evil, and deserves an awful and endless punishment. It offers 
an undeserved salvation ; a salvation spurned by the proud, 
and welcomed only by the humble. It inspires a spirit of 
self-abasement. To this point tend all its doctrines, all its 
precepts, all its promises, all its denunciations. 

This, we contend, is not the gospel's reproach, but its 
honor ; its prime excellence. It is fit that the pride of our 
hearts should be humbled ; that all human glory should be 
laid in dust, and God alone exalted. Why so reluctant 
to take our proper place as sinners ? What satisfaction, what 
real honor, in bearing about a bold front, as if we had no 
guilt to confess, and no pardon to implore ? And what is that 
bright moment in which the first gleam of real joy finds its 
way to the heart ? It is the moment when it begins to be 
humble when, abandoning all its proud pretensions, and 
self-justifying pleas, it casts itself on the infinite compassion, 
the sovereign mercy of an offended, yet forgiving God. 
Then peace and hope and pardon come. Then an air of 
heaven breathes on the heart, before desolate and wretched. 
Then the High and Lofty One who inhabits eternity, comes 
down and dwells in the happy soul. 

If, my hearers, the heaven of Christianity is a heaven of 
perfect humility ; if there, none is great but God ; if saints 
and angels combine to lose themselves in ascribing glory to 
their Eternal King; if this is the very essence of their 
felicity ; then let us look well to our religion. A religion 
which does not make us genuinely humble ; which leaves the 
pride and self-sufficiency of our hearts unsubdued : which 

perhaps affords nutriment and strength to these hateful dispo- 
2 



10 

sitions ; is not the religion we want. It may flatter us ; but it 
will flatter to betray, and to destroy. In the arrogance of 
our minds, we may hope to scale the heavens ; to force our 
way, through cherubim and a flaming sword, to the tree of 
life ; but the attempt will be as abortive, as it is impious. 

If to these momentous considerations, any thing could be 
superadded, we might say, that pride is the grand foe, even 
of temporal enjoyment. Shooting up within us in baleful 
luxuriance, it finds its way, by a thousand ramifications, to 
every source of human comfort, and infuses bitterness and 
poison into them all. What but pride renders us dissatisfied 
with Providence ; discontented with our lot ; restless in pros- 
perity; wretched in adversity? Poverty, unkindness, neg- 
lect, reproach, disappointment, all have their stings; but they 
might all be repelled, or evaded, did not our own pride 
acuminate and direct them to the heart. The proud man is 
a perfect sensitive plant, shrinking from every touch, and 
shrivelled by every breeze. Or, to use the more expressive 
language of Scripture, he is like the troubled sea, when it 
cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. O how 
kind is that gospel, which, designing to restore us to peace, 
aims its mortal blow at the grand enemy of our peace. Not 
content with the tedious process of cutting off the streams, it 
dries up the very fountain by which they are supplied. It 
makes us humble. 

In this great point the gospel stands alone. Almost all the 
ancient systems of philosophy and ethics leave the pride of 
the human heart unsubdued and unassailed. The philoso- 
phers of Greece and Rome seem to have regarded the task 
as too hardy, and too hopeless. Nor had they weapons to 
attack this giant sin with any prospect of success. Indeed, 
the enemy had a citadel in their own breasts. All their views 
on the subject were indistinct and confused. That they had 
not so much as a speculative idea of humility, as a virtue, is 
evident from their language, in which they confounded it with 



11 

meanness and abjectness of spirit. In how many Christian 
communities do the same sentiments and language prevail. 
We so often hear of an honest pride, a noble pride, a generous 
pride, and even a necessary pride, that we almost forget that 
pride in all its forms is hateful. While to great numbers, 
humility and meekness convey no idea, but that of a tame, 
spiritless, servile character. It is time that our language 
were reformed. And surely it is time .that our sentiments on 
topics of vital interest were assayed and corrected by the 
standard of the gospel. 

We proceed to consider another objection against this divine 
system ; an objection drawn from its unyielding, unassimilat- 
ing character. The gospel pays little regard to the factitious 
distinctions of society. It bends not to the maxims of worldly 
policy, nor to the caprices of fashion, nor to the refinements 
of polished life, nor to the lax morality of a dissipated age. 
It is equally unaccommodating to the speculations of philoso- 
phy ; nor will it modify its principles, in compliment to any 
imaginary or real improvements in art, or science, or litera- 
ture. On all these points, the fact is confessed. And may 
not Christianity, in each case, be completely justified ? 

It never was designed, surely, to interfere with the whole- 
some order of society, nor to trample down its salutary dis- 
tinctions. It renders to all their dues. It pays a decent 
respect to station and rank. But it connects with them, too, 
peculiar duties and responsibilities. It faithfully warns them 
of peculiar dangers. Not unfrequently it dispenses its smiles 
and rewards by rules exactly the reverse of those which 
obtain in the world. It plucks the laurel from the brow of 
the ambitious, ruthless conqueror, to place it on the head of 
the humble man, who subdues his own passions, and is con- 
tent to do good in silence. In short, it approves, it loves, it 
honors, it rewards nothing but SIMPLE GOODNESS. It passes 
by, with mortifying indifference, the schemes of statesmen, 
the exploits of heroes, and the learned labors of mere scholars 



12 

and philosophers. It even blasts with its deadliest frown the 
admired productions of prostituted genius, and perverted 
talents ; consigning their authors to the depths of infamy and 
shame. Is not Christianity then the best friend of individuals, 
and of society-? 

Among the multitudes who acknowledge the general ex- 
cellence of the morality of the gospel, there are not a few 
who think it unnecessarily strict and precise. Many a man 
engaged in traffick, who would not be thought destitute of a 
conscience, reconciles himself to occasional, and not unfre- 
quent deviations. Yet who sees not that this very strictness, 
were it but universally practised, would shed the happiest 
influence, not only on all commercial transactions, but on the 
whole intercourse of society. Many a grave politician, too, 
deems the morality of the Bible, however useful to indi- 
viduals, altogether inconvenient to states ; and without scruple 
sacrifices the right to the expedient. Narrow, shortsighted, 
wretched policy ! Cannot the interests of our country be 
supported without violating the eternal laws of heaven ? 
Then let them sink. But what man of reason and reflection 
can for a moment suspect it ? Were the Fathers of New 
England mere novices and drivellers, in regarding the Bible 
as their pole-star, and the interests of religion and virtue as 
the main concern ? Let the profusion of blessings poured on 
them by indulgent Heaven, declare. Let the fair and rich 
patrimony which they have transmitted to us, declare. 
When, when shall we behold the delightful spectacle of a 
whole nation imbibing the spirit of Christianity, and regulat- 
ing by the principles of eternal truth, its policy, its laws, its 
administration at home, and its intercourse abroad ? Would 
such a nation sink to a mean and degraded condition ? Would 
it not be the happiest, the most dignified nation on which the 
sun looks down ? Would not its example point out to a 
gazing, admiring world, the path to real prosperity, and hap- 
piness, and glory ? 



13 

In commercial and populous cities, accumulated wealth 
never fails to induce luxury, dissipation, and an excessive 
rage for amusement. Pleasure spreads her snares, and is 
pursued through all her varied haunts. With thousands, 
amusement becomes the habitual pursuit, and the grand end 
of life. The gospel comes, and speaks to these triflers, of 
death, of judgment, of interminable joys and woes. It re- 
minds them that they were not sent into the world to be 
amused ; but to serve God and man, and to prepare for the 
high destinies of eternity. It warns them that a life of levity 
is a life of guilt j that many of their chosen pleasures pollute 
the imagination, and corrupt the heart ; and that the most 
innocent, if pursued as a business, enervate the mind, banish 
serious thought, and close the soul against God and religion. 
And it faithfully warns them of the folly, the madness, the 
ruin of dreaming away those precious, fleeting moments on 
which their salvation depends. But in thus calling them off 
from the mere phantoms of enjoyment, it does not leave them 
without resource. It invites them to the fountain of pure and 
everlasting felicity. It bids them possess pleasures real, 
rational, elevated, unfailing the unknown delight of opening 
the heart in love to God, and love to man the luxury of 
doing good the joy of an approving conscience the trans- 
port of Christian hope the sublime, heart thrilling anticipa- 
tion of happiness beyond the grave. 

In an advanced state of society, and especially in the cir- 
cles of opulence and refinement, it is apt to be discovered 
that the principles and laws of Christianity, however suitable 
to the vulgar, are less adapted to informed and polished 
minds. A new code is introduced ; and the general homage 
transferred to a new sovereign, termed Fashion. And truly, 
the pretensions of this new sovereign are far from modest. 
Not content with prescribing laws to dress, to equipage, to 
the intercourse of society, to the exterior of manners, she 
claims to mould and govern the very essence of manners, 



and of morals and religion too. As a substitute for the rigid 
and repulsive system of the gospel, she prescribes a soft and 
easy religion ; a religion which has little to disgust the proud, 
the worldly, the gay, or the voluptuous. And shall Chris- 
tianity, the daughter of the skies, bend in homage to this 
earth-born, self-created sovereign ? Shall her consecrated 
ministers descend from their elevation, and unite with the 
thoughtless crowd in their worship of the idol ? Shall they, 
with inverted ambition, court the world's smile, 

By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour ? 

Shall they, in compliance with the popular whim, preach a 
religion which alarms no conscience ; which neither mortifies 
nor disturbs the latent corruptions of the heart ; which 
scarcely gives to open vice a blush, or a fear . ? Or shall 
they, in the face of opposition, of ridicule, of scorn, dare 
preach the gospel the gospel in its naked simplicity the 
gospel in its uncompromising strictness ? 

But reason and philosophy, not less than fashion, prefer 
their claims ; and frequently have arrayed themselves with a 
still more formidable front, against the religion of the gospel. 
Not that we admit that between the gospel and genuine phi- 
losophy, there is the least discrepance. Our religion courts 
inquiry. It shrinks not from the most rigid investigation. 
From the very hottest furnace of genuine criticism, it has 
ever come forth uninjured, brightened, and triumphant. Yet 
there is a spirit of bold speculation, in which it cannot be 
approached without a degree of impiety. Surely it will not 
be denied, that there are certain great points on wliich the 
Scripture speaks a language explicit, unequivocal and deci- 
sive. Nor can it be less clear, that in every such case, 
nothing remains to mortals, but implicit belief and acquies- 
cence. To demur, on points like these ; to subject them to 
the ordeal of our own reason, what is it, but to call in ques- 
tion the wisdom of the Eternal, to rejudge his judgment, and 



15 

deny his truth ? What is it, but to renounce the benefit of 
Revelation, to renounce Revelation itself, and plunge in the 
cheerless, shoreless gulf of skepticism and infidelity ? 

To instance, for a moment, in the great question of the 
future state of the wicked. That their punishment will be 
properly endless, we have precisely the same evidence from 
Scripture, as of the endless felicity of the righteous. The 
point being thus definitively settled, and by the only compe- 
tent tribunal, should it not be for ever put to rest ? Shall 
we unsettle our own minds, or the minds of others, in a point 
of such vital importance, by any plausible reasonings which 
go to diminish the evil of sin, and to mitigate its punishment ? 
To estimate the evil, and the desert of sin, may it not be 
needful that we should know, more fully than we can possibly 
know in the present state, the excellencies of the Being it 
offends, tbe perfection of the law it violates, and its own 
malignant aspects, tendencies, and actual consequences, as 
they regard both this and other worlds ? Is it wise, in a 
point of such moment, to call in the imagination and the 
passions, to blind the judgment? Who but God himself can 
certainly know what he will do with his offending creatures ? 
When he lias made and declared his decision, shall man call 
it into question ? Is it doing honor to the Sovereign of the 
world, to suppose that he will decide the final states of men 
by other rules, than those he has explicitly proclaimed ? 
Shall selfish mortals arrogate to themselves to be more mer- 
ciful than their Creator ? Shall criminals ascend the judgment 
seat, and pronounce sentence in their own case ? We may 
ask farther : shall the spiritual physician administer poison, 
because it is sweet ? Shall he confine himself to opiates, 
because they give present ease? Shall the victim of fatal 
disease be soothed and flattered, when the hand of death is 
upon him ? Shall the spiritual watchman, whose first duty it 
is, to warn the wicked, decline the merciful warning ? Shall 



16 

he, by crying peace, till destruction comes, incur the guilt of 
cruelty the guilt of blood ? 

While the gospel resists the efforts of reason and philoso- 
phy to disprove or conceal its doctrines, it refuses to be 
modified by them. Attempts of this kind have been wit- 
nessed in every age. Men of subtile and speculating minds, 
perhaps friends to the gospel, but not perfectly reconciled to 
the simplicity of its doctrines, have aimed to improve and to 
recommend them, by heterogeneous mixtures of their own. 
Indeed, there is something plausible in the attempt to show 
that all the philosophy and logic and learning in the world 
are capable of being pressed into the service of religion. In 
a qualified sense, this is even the fact. But there is another 
fact which has been too much overlooked. These auxiliaries, 
however useful and efficient in arraying the evidences of 
Christianity, and establishing its truth, have much less to do 
in expounding its doctrines. Here, their office is altogether 
subordinate. And when they forget their humble station and 
duty ; when, instead of submissively inquiring what the 
Author of the Bible has taught, they assume to show what he 
ought to teach, they forfeit every claim to confidence. Their 
light becomes darkness, and their wisdom, mere hallucina- 
tion. We undervalue not the rich and splendid contributions 
of learning to the cause of piety. From geography and 
geology, from researches in ancient history, from the various 
manuscripts and versions, from erudite criticism, the most 
important confirmation has arisen to the truth and divinity of 
the Bible. These weapons, once ostentatiously brandished 
on the side of infidelity, have been triumphantly wrested from 
its hands, and employed with effect in defence of the Scrip- 
tures. But the grand and most interesting doctrines of the 
Bible are found on the very surface of its pages. They 
claim to be seen by their own light, and to rest on their own 
peculiar principles. They borrow no aid from human phi- 



17 

losophy ; no splendor from human eloquence. They ask no 
recommendation, but from their own unadorned simplicity 
and beauty. 

But it may ^e asked, perhaps, Is not this an age of great 
and unexampled improvements? Is not the human mind 
on its rapid march to perfection ? Has not a flood of light 
recently burst upon the world ? Amidst the improvements 
of art, and the not less astonishing revolutions of science, 
shall religion alone remain stationary ? Since in other sci- 
ences, many principles have long been received as truths, 
which have ultimately been exploded as errors ; and many 
truths, long latent, have by time and investigation, been 
brought to light, may not a similar process be expected in 
religion ? May not many of its first principles remain yet 
undiscovered ? And may not many points which the most 
enlightened Christians now hold as truths, be exploded, in 
some age of superior illumination, as so many errors and 
falsehoods ? 

Our reply to these questions is simple and brief. The 
arts and sciences are inventions of man. What man invents, 
as it is of course imperfect, he may improve ; and he may 
improve without end. Religion is a revelation from God. 
Like its Author, it is perfect, and is incapable of improve- 
ment. It admits no change, no progress, no diminution, no 
addition. Christianity was complete and consummate in its 
very infancy. Or rather, it had no infancy. Like the first 
parent of the human race, it came from the hand of its 
Author, mature in all its faculties ; perfect in all its attributes. 
By every past attempt to improve it, it has only been dete- 
riorated and debased. Nor is any thing better to be antici- 
pated for the future. Far sooner might weak, aspiring mor- 
tals hope to add lustre to the sun, or beauty and order to this 
fair and well adjusted creation, than to improve, by the re- 
finements of learning and philosophy, that religion which has 
3 



18 

come to us direct from heaven, and which, in all its features, 
bears the impress of its perfect and divine Author. 

We admit, indeed, that in one great instance, Christianity 
has undergone a process of reformation. Bu*, what was that 
reformation, other than the removal of the dust and rubbish, 
the ignorance, and error, and gross superstition, which during 
a night of a thousand years, had been gathering around the 
religion of Christ ? In other words, what was it, but a 
return, or more properly, an approximation, to the grand 
elementary principles of this divine religion, and to the sim- 
plicity and purity of its earliest and best days ? 

It has been objected against Christianity, that it is rigid, 
indeed impracticable, in its demands ; that it enjoins a purity 
absolutely incompatible with our present state of being ; in 
fine, that it permits us to rest in nothing short of absolute 
perfection. 

That the gospel erects a lofty standard of morals ; that its 
claims in point of purity are large ; that it bids us aim even 
at perfection ; is not denied. That it enjoins any duties which 
are, strictly speaking, impracticable, is not admitted. On 
the whole, we have a right to contend, that the objection 
itself stamps the religion of the Bible with a character of ex- 
cellence utterly unparalleled, and even unapproached, in any 
other system of morals or religion which the world has seen. 

From the very constitution of the human mind, it results, 
that in order to the actual attainment of even a moderate 
degree of moral excellence, the aims must be large and 
elevated. No man ever rises higher than the standard which 
he proposes to himself. The universal tendency is, to fall 
below such a standard. Had Christianity embraced in its 
system of morals, the allowance of a single sin, the defect 
would have been fatal. A single sin indulged is like a gan- 
grene, which gradually and surely spreads its deleterious 
influence through the whole system. The gospel, in pro- 



19 

posing nothing less than perfection, as the object of our 
pursuit, has effectually provided for our arriving at lofty 
attainments. The object being grand and sublime, there is 
an inspiration imparted to the very aim. 

Farther : let it be considered that if the gospel standard is 
high, and its duties arduous, its motives likewise are motives 
of immense and indescribable force. Take, for instance, the 
high demands it makes upon us respecting love to our 
enemies, and forgiveness of injuries. What duties can be 
harder than these, to flesh and blood? How do all the 
hateful propensities of our nature rise in arms against them. 
But behold the Saviour. Remember that the simple feeling 
which brought him down from heaven to earth, was love ; 
all-conquering, unconquerable love, to enemies and to rebels 
and we were those enemies and rebels. Behold him on 
the cross. See those eyes raised to heaven in pity for his 
unrelenting crucifiers. And hear that voice : FATHER, FOR- 
GIVE THEM; FOR THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO. And 
now, does not every feeling of resentment and revenge die 
within you at once ? Do you find it hard to forgive, to love, 
the unkindest enemy you ever had f Or do you find it easy, 
delightful, inevitable ? 

But beside the all-powerful motives, there are all-powerful 
aids too. Nothing is to be done, nothing is to be attempted, 
by the power of unassisted nature. A HOLY SPIRIT offers 
his mild, but effectual influence, to subdue every corruption, 
to inspire every holy disposition, to excite, to strengthen, and 
carry into act, every virtuous purpose. This HEAVENLY 
FRIEND is ever at hand ; nay more, is ever within us, if we 
are Christians ; waiting to impart his sacred influence, and 
more ready to bestow, than we to ask it. How inestimably 
precious is this provision of eternal mercy. What a sovereign 
antidote against despondence. What an exhaustless spring 
of high designs, of holy resolutions, of strenuous efforts ; of 



20 

untiring, unconquerable zeal and perseverance in the path of 
duty. 

In fine : as holiness, and holiness alone, is the happiness of 
intelligent and immortal beings, it follows, that to require it, 
in the largest measures, and by the most imperious obliga- 
tions, is only to impose on us the duty of being sublimely and 
exquisitely happy. Shall this, in our Creator, be deemed 
unkind ? Shall it be made a topic of complaint ? What 
would a license to sin be, but an invitation to be miserable ? 
Is there a soul that has begun to escape the iron bondage of 
corruption, that does not sigh and long for complete deliver- 
ance ? Is there a heart that has known the ardors of heav- 
enly love, that does not pant to be all inflamed with the 
sacred passion ? Is there a saint in glory who would wish 
his obligations to holiness relaxed ? Is there a seraph who 
" adores and burns" around the throne of God, who would 
consent to be less firmly bound to that throne ? And what 
are the highest attainments of Christians on earth, but feeble 
approximations to the purity and bliss of the celestial 
state ? 

Time will permit us to consider but a single additional ob- 
jection against Christianity. By many it has been thought to 
conceal within itself the seeds of enthusiasm, and to impart 
this mischievous spirit to its votaries. 

Enthusiasm properly denotes an excessive mental excite- 
ment ; an extravagant ardor of feeling. To determine, 
therefore, its existence in any given case, we must first 
estimate the feelings excited, the object to which they are 
directed, and their relative proportion or disproportion. 

To those who, devoted to the cares, the business, the 
amusements, or the ambitions of the world, regard religion as 
a secondary thing, the deep and absorbing interest of its real 
votaries must naturally appear extravagant. To those whose 
faith in the Scriptures is feeble and vacillating, the settled, 



21 

earnest conviction of those who attach to them a divine and 
all-controlling authority, must seem misplaced and delusive. 
Those who think it of little importance what a man believes, 
will consider the zeal which is expended in defence of the 
truth, a mere waste of time and temper. Those who view 
all pretensions to vital piety as craft, or delusion, will view 
the friends of vital piety as either unsound at heart, or 
touched in the brain. Those who hope to see heaven without 
conversion, will regard all serious concern about conversion, 
as a needless trouble. Those who feel no anxieties for the 
spiritual interests and prospects of their neighbors and fellow- 
countrymen, will view the anxieties of others as gloomy and 
absurd ; and their endeavors to arouse them, as officious and 
unkind. Those who perceive little need of a public reforma- 
tion of manners, will regard the advocates of the cause as 
righteous overmuch. Those who believe that the heathen 
can live happily and die safely, without the gospel, will not 
think highly of the wisdom of employing great exertion or 
expense to evangelize them. 

But there are other views of the subject. What, my be- 
loved hearers, if religion be in fact the grand, all-important 
object of life ; which being secured, all is secured ; which 
being lost, all is lost? What if the Bible be indeed the word 
of the Eternal God ; written by his inspiration, and stamped 
with all his authority ? What if its truths, so obnoxious to 
human pride, and human depravity ; so disgusting to the nice 
and sickly palate of a polished age ; furnish the only medicine 
for the diseases of the mind ? And what if the wilful rejec- 
tion of these truths should prove, in its very nature, an act of 
self-exclusion from everlasting blessings ? What if those 
despised things, conversion, a new heart, faith in a crucified 
Redeemer, should prove the only passports to heaven ? What 
if a life spent in thoughtless gaiety, or in anxious devotion to 
the world, in neglect of God, of prayer, of the soul, though 



22 

not stained with gross vice, should terminate in bitterness, 
and anguish, and despair ? What if every human being be 
absolutely bound to make, not only his own spiritual interests, 
but the spiritual interests of others too, the objects of his 
grand and habitual concern ? What if a general reformation 
of manners, and the preservation of religious institutions in 
their purity, be the only means of saving our free and favored 
country from going down to the common grave of republics ? 
What if the heathen really and pressingly need the gospel at 
our hands ; and what if, in case we withhold it, they will 
bitterly upbraid us before the tribunal of God ? 

One thing is certain. If religion be not the grand object; 
if the immortal interests of ourselves and others be not the 
chief concern ; we must wholly change our estimate of num- 
bers of our race, who have ever been regarded as lights of 
the world, and ornaments of their species. And can it be, 
that Abraham, in quitting all that is dear to man, that he 
might become an heir to brighter worlds, and a blessing to 
distant ages, was chargeable with weakness and folly . ? Were 
the apostles, in leaving their little all for their Saviour, con- 
tent with toil and suffering ; content with a martyr's crown 
were they ignorant of the true value and end of life ? Was 
Paul a weak enthusiast, when, with the ardor and rapidity of 
a seraph, he explored distant regions and seas, encountering 
every form of danger, and suffering, and toil ; anxious only 
that he might finish his course with joy, and the ministry he 
had received of the Lord Jesus . ? 

But it is while looking at that Saviour himself; to the 
heaven from which he came down ; to the garden in which 
he agonized ; to the cross on which he expired ; to the 
matchless LOVE which prompted the whole that we get the 
brightest views of the worth of the soul, the worth of religion, 
and our own ouligations of entire self-devotion to its interests. 
With these objects full in view, we shall feel how unworthy 



23 

we are of the charge of enthusiasm. Our warmest love to 
such a Saviour will seem cold ; our liveliest gratitude, un- 
grateful ; and our tenderest pity for our fellow sinners, a 
species of guilty apathy. We may lament, indeed, that our 
exertions for our Saviour are not animated by purer motives, 
by simpler aims, by more of his own heavenly meekness and 
humility ; but never, never can we suspect that they can 
reach an ardor worthy of the cause. Nor will we fear that, 
on the bed of death, we shall regret any thing that we have 
done, or suffered, or sacrificed, for Christ and his church. 

REVEREND AND DEAR BROTHER, 

Providence has changed your place, but not your duty. 
In transferring you from that distant sphere in which you 
have, for years, delighted to preach the gospel of your 
Saviour, it bids you preach the same gospel in the midst of 
this great and flourishing metropolis. This, we doubt not, is 
your fixed and unalterable purpose. Convinced, by all your 
observation and experience, as well as by the testimony of 
Heaven, that THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST is THE POWER OF 
GOD TO SALVATION, you will never, never be ashamed of it. 
Convinced that its most offensive truths are pre-eminently 
kind and salutary ; that they humble to exalt ; that they 
wound to heal and save ; you will neither conceal nor disguise 
them. You will not cease to proclaim them in all their sim- 
plicity and energy. 

And charged with a gracious message, you will deliver it 
with a grace. The love of Jesus, your favorite theme, will 
enliven every sermon, and perfume every prayer. It will im- 
part tenderness to your aspect, heavenly compassion to your 
feelings, and an unaffected, winning kindness to all your 
demeanor. 

Coming to your new charge in this spirit, you may hope to 
bring blessings with you. To some, indeed, your preaching 



24 

will too probably be a savor of death unto death ; but to 
others it will be a savor of life unto life. You may not carry 
the crowd ; but you will lead a humble and happy few to 
their Saviour, and to heaven. You may not receive the 
plaudit of the licentious and the gay ; but the blessing of 
souls ready to perish shall come upon you. You may not 
dazzle the world ; but you shall shine as the brightness of 
the firmament, and as the stars for ever and ever. 



ADDRESS, 



Institution in ^wfierst, 



BY HEMAN HUMPHREY, D. D. 



OK OCCASION OF HIS 



INAUGURATION TO THE PRESIDENCY OF THAT INSTITUTION, 



OCT. 15, 1823. 



BOSTON: 

FHINTED BY CROCKEB AND BBEWSTSB, 

No. SO, ConJiill. 

1825. 



ADDRESS. 



IT is a deeply afflictive and mysterious dispensation of 
Providence, which has so lately bereaved this infant 
seminary of its head, and by which I am now brought 
with inexperienced and trembling steps to its thresh- 
hold. If prayer offered to God without ceasing for 
Dr*Moore, on his sick bed, could have prolonged his 
invaluable life; if professional assiduity could have 
warded off the fatal stroke; or if agonized affection 
could have shielded him in her embrace, he had not 
died and left this favourite child of his adoption to an 
early and perilous orphanage. Committed to his pa- 
ternal guardianship in its infancy, there was but one 
earthly object dearer to his heart. While, therefore, 
he daily commended it to the benediction of Heaven, 
and rejoiced in the rapid developement of its powers, 
he did all that experience, affection and assiduity could 
do, to cherish its growth, and to lay deep the founda- 
tions of its future usefulness. So completely had he 



identified himself with its interests, that no hostile 
weapon could reach it without first piercing his heart. 
He felt all its perplexities and adversities as if they 
had been his own: and as some compensation for 
these, he enjoyed, in a high degree, its brightening 
prospects; its youthful and buoyant anticipations. 

With what ability Dr. Moore presided over this 
Institution; how cheerfully he devoted to it all his 
tinue and talents; with how many difficulties he had to 
struggle, when every thing was to be done and the 
means of doing were so scanty and precarious; with 
what filial love and veneration he was regarded by his 
pupils; how liberal and disinterested were all his views 
and measures; how successful were his appeals to an 
enlightened Christian public in behalf of the seminary; 
and how his dying eye kindled with joy and thankful- 1 
ness, when he was told that an important measure for 
increasing the funds had succeeded all these things 
are best known to those, who were most intimately 
associated with him in his plans and labours, and they 
will be long and gratefully remembered. 

The question has often occurred to a thousand anx- 
ious minds, How could such a man, in such a station, and 
at such a time be spared? And who can describe that 
deep and electrical throb of anguish, which smote the 
heart of this institution, when he breathed his last, 
and every student felt that he had lost a father? O 
what a shuddering was there within these walls, when 
that funeral pall, which hung portentous for a few 
days in mid heaven, was let down by hands unseen 
upon yonder dwelling! That pall is not yet removed. 
It conceals at once from mortal view, the venerated 



form of our departed friend, and the awful depths of 
infinite wisdom in taking him away. And who, since 
the dyinof agonies are over, would call the sainted 
spirit back, to revive the troubled dream of life in a 
sleep that is now so peaceful? "I heard a voice from 
heaven saying unto me, write, blessed are the dead 
which die in the Lord from henceforth; yea, saith the 
spirit, that they may rest from their labours, and their 
works do follow them." 

If Dr. Moore himself wished to live yet longer, it 
was, we confidently believe, more for the sake of 
others, than for his own. And while he did live, it 
was his ardent devotion to the interests of the church 
and of sound learning, which prompted him to efforts 
beyond his strength, if not immediately prejudicial to 
his life. It certainly would have gratified his benevo- 
lent heart, to have been permitted to see the Institu- 
tion over which he presided, relieved from all its em- 
barrassments, and taking rank in form, as well as in 
fact, with the older Colleges of New England. And 
if faith is any thing, it can scarcely be said, that he 
'died without the sight.' With what confidence he 
spoke of the future prosperity and usefulness of the 
seminary, particularly towards the close of his life, 
many who hear me can testify. 

If we estimate the length of life, by what a man 
actually accomplishes for the best good of his kind, 
we shall see, that Dr. Moore, though taken away in 
the high meridian of his usefulness, was "old and full 
of days." To say nothing here, of the ability with 
which he filled other important stations, and of the 
good which he did in them all, the services rendered 



6 

by him to this Institution, within less than the short 
space of two years, were sufficient to entitle him to 
the gratitude of thousands now living, and of far 
greater numbers who are yet to be born. Broad and 
deep are the foundations which he assisted in laying 
upon this consecrated hill. Strong was his own arm 
freely was it offered for the great work, and power- 
ful was the impulse which his presence and ever cheer- 
ing voice gave to the wakening energies of benevo- 
lence around him. But highly as his various plans 
and counsels and labours are now appreciated, future 
generations, in walking over this ground, with the 
early history of the College before them, will, there 
is little reason to doubt, place him still higher among 
its distinguished benefactors. It will then more fully 
appear, what and how much he did, to give shape and 
character to an Institution, which we believe is des- 
tined to live and bless the church, in all coming ages. 
The time will not permit me to dwell longer upon 
a theme, which is at once so 'pleasant and mournful to 
the soulj' nor could I, on the other hand, have said 
less, without doing injustice alike to the occasion and 
to my own feelings, called, as I am this day, to occupy 
the chair which has been left vacant, by the mournful, 
though serene departure of my highly venerated 
friend. 

It is possible, too, that at this interesting moment, 
I might be indulged in speaking of the struggles and 
misgivings and breaking of ties which it has cost me, 
to tear myself away from the quiet and much loved 
scenes of pastoral labours, and to exchange them all, 
for an untried and highly responsible sphere of liter- 



ary action. But why should I look back? Why so 
fondly covet the mysterious pleasure of feeling in ev- 
ery rending heart-string, all those struggles again? 
Rather let me 'forget the things which are behind, 
and reach forth unto those things which are before' 
looking up daily to heaven for strength and wisdom 
and grace bespeaking also the prayers, relying on 
the efficient aid, and throwiog myself upon the Chris- 
tian candour of the friends and patrons of this rising 
seminary. 

Convened as we are this day, in the portals of sci- 
ence aud literature, and with all their arduous heights 
and profound depths and Elysian fields before us, edu- 
cation offers itself as the inspiring theme of our present 
meditations. This, in a free, enlightened and Chris- 
tian state, is confessedly a subject of the highest mo- 
ment. How can the diamond reveal its lustre from 
beneath incumbent rocks and earthy strata? How 
can the marble speak, or stand %rth in all the divine 
symmetry of the human form, till it is taken from the 
quarry and fashioned by the hand of the artist? And 
how can man be intelligent, happy, or useful, without 
the culture and discipline of education? It is this that 
smooths and polishes the roughnesses of his nature. 
It is this, that unlocks the prison house of his mind 
and releases the captive. It is the transforming 
hand of education, which is now in so many heathen 
lands moulding savageness and igaorance, pagan fanat- 
icism and brutal stupidity, revenge and treachery and 
lust; and in short, all the warring elements of our 
lapsed nature, into the various forms of exterior de- 
cency, of mental brilliancy and of Christian loveliness. 



a 

It is education that pours light into the understanding, 
lays up its golden treasures in the memory, softens the 
asperities of the temper, checks the waywardness of 
passion and appetite and trains to habits of industry, 
temperance and benevolence. It is this which quali- 
fies men for the pulpit, the senate, the bar, the prac- 
tice of medicine and the bench of justice. It is to ed- 
ucation, to its domestic agents, its schools and colleges, 
its universities and literary societies, that the world is 
indebted for the thousand comforts and elegancies of 
civilized life, for almost every useful art, discovery 
and invention. 

Education, moreover, is power physical, intellect- 
ual and moral power. To be convinced of this, we 
need only compare our own great republic with the 
myriads of pagan or savage men, in any part of 
the world. How astonishing the difference, in every 
important respect! ^or what can the ignorant hordes 
of central Africa or Asia do, either in arts or in arms? 
What to make themselves happy at home, or re- 
spected abroad? And what, on the other hand, cannot 
civilized America accomplish? 

In a word, education, regarding man as a rational, 
accountable and immortal being, elevates, expands and 
enriches his mind; cultivates the best affections of his 
heart; pours a thousand sweet and gladdening streams 
around the dwellings of the poor as well as the man- 
sions of the rich, and while it greatly multiplies and 
enhances the enjoyments of time, helps to train up the 
soul for the bliss of eternity. 

How extremely important, then, is every inquiry 
which relates to the philosophy of the human mind 



to the early discipline and cultivation of its noble pow- 
ers to the comparative merits and defects of classical 
books and prevailing systems of instruction to the 
advantages accruing from mathematical and other ab- 
struse studies to the means of educating the children 
of the poor in our public seminaries to the present 
state of science and literature in our country; and to 
the animating prospects which are opening before us. 
All these topics and many more, nearly related, pre- 
sent themselves to the enlightened and philanthropic 
mind, as it looks abroad from some commanding emi- 
nence, or ranges .at leisure over the wide and busy 
fields of human improvement. It must be obvious, 
however, upon a moment's reflection, that it would 
take many a long day to traverse a space so ample; to 
drink of every Castalian fountain in the way; to take 
the altitudes of Parnassus; to measure the steeps of 
science; and to see what is going forward in a thou- 
sand splendid literary halls and wonder working labora- 
tories. How little then, can be done within the brief 
hour, which is alloted to the present exercises. Upon 
many very interesting objects and enclosures we can 
scarcely bestow a passing glance, and can linger for a 
few moments only, where most we might love to 
dwell, or at least to sit down at our leisure and enjoy 
the goodly prospect. 

In treating of education, we may advantageously 
divide the subject, into the three great branches, of 
physical, intellectual and moral improvement. Under 
these heads, we shall include all that is requisite to 
form a sound and healthy body, a vigorous and well 
stored mind, and a good heart. If the first of these, 
2 



10 

or what I choose to call the physical part of educa- 
tion, has not been wholly overlooked, (as it certainly 
has not,) in the most popular systems, still, it may well 
be questioned, whether it has yet received that degree 
of attention, which its immense importance demands. 

Such, in our present condition, is the mysterious con- 
nexion between body arid mind, that the one cannot 
act, except on a very limited scale, without the assist- 
ance of the other. The immortal agent must have an 
"earthly house" to dwell in; and it is essential to vig- 
orous and healthful mental operations, that this house 
should be well built, and that it should be kept in good 
repair. Now, it is the province of physical education, 
to erect the building, and in carrying it up, to have 
special reference to its firmness and durability; so that 
the unseen tenant, who is sent down to occupy it, 
may enjoy every convenience, and be enabled to work 
to the very best advantage. 

That is undoubtedly the wisest and best regimen, 
which takes the infant from the cradle, and conducts 
him along through childhood and youth, up to high 
maturity, in such a manner, as to give strength to his 
arm, swiftness to his feet, solidity and amplitude to his 
muscles, symmetry to his frame and expansion to all 
his vital energies. It is obvious, that this branch of 
education, comprehends not only food and clothing; 
but air, exercise, lodging, early rising, and whatever 
else is requisite to the full developement of the phys- 
ical constitution. 

If, then, you would see the son of your prayers and 
hopes, blooming with health, and rejoicing daily in the 
full and sparkling tide of youthful buoyancy; if you 



11 

wish him to be strong and athletic and careless of fa- 
tigue; if you would fit him for hard labour and safe 
exposure to winter and summer; or if you would 
prepare him to sit down twelve hours in a day with 
Euclid, Enfield and .Newton, and still preserve his 
health, you must lay the foundation accordingly. You 
must begin with him early, must teach him self-denial, 
and gradually subject him to such hardships, as will 
help to consolidate his frame and give increasing en- 
ergy to all his physical powers. His diet must be 
simple, his apparel must not be too warm, nor his bed 
too soft. As good soil is commonly so much cheaper 
and better for children than medicine, beware of too 
much restriction in the management of your darling 
boy. Let him, in choosing his play, follow the sug- 
gestions of nature. 

Be not discomposed at the sight of his sand hills in 
the road, his snow forts in February, and his mud- 
dams in April; nor when you chance to look out in 
the midst of an August shower, and see him wading 
and sailing and sporting along with the water-fowl. 
If you would make him hardy and fearless, let him 
go abroad as often as he pleases, in his early boyhood, 
and amuse himself by the hour together, in smoothing 
and twirling the hoary locks of winter. Instead of 
keeping him shut up all day with a stove, and gradu- 
ating his sleeping room by Fahrenheit, let him face 
the keen edge of the north wind, when the mercury is 
below cypher, and instead of minding a little shiver- 
ing and complaining when he returns, cheer up his 
spirits and send him out agaii% In this way, you will 
teach him that he was not born to live in the nursery, 



12 

nor to brood over the kitchen fire; but to range 
abroad as free as the snow and the air, and to gain 
warmth from exercise. I love and admire the youth, 
who turns not back from the howling wintry blast, 
nor withers under the blaze of summer: who never 
magnifies 'mole-hills into mountains,' but whose daring 
eye, exulting, scales the eagle's airy crag, and who is 
ready to undertake any thing that is prudent and law- 
ful, within the range of possibility. 

Who would think of planting the mountain oak in 
a green-house, or of rearing the cedar of Lebanon in 
a lady's flower pot? Who does not know that in or- 
der to attain their mighty strength and majestic forms, 
they must freely enjoy the rain and the sunshme, and 
must feel the rocking of the tempest? Who would 
think of raising up a band of Indian warriors, upon 
cakes and jellies and beds of down, and amid all the 
luxuries and ease of wealth and carefulness? The 
attempt would be highly preposterous, not to say 
utterly ridiculous. Very different is the course 
which nature points out. It is the plain and scanty 
fare of these sons of the forest, their hard and cold 
lodging, their long marches and fastings, and their con- 
stant exposure to all the hardships of the wilderness, 
which give them such Herculean limbs and stature; 
such prodigious might in the deadly fray, and such 
swiftness of foot in pursuing the vanquished. 

I am far, however, from saying, that such training, 
would ensure to every child the arm of Achilles, or 
the courage of Logan, or the constitution and daring 
of Martin Luther. Some would doubtless sink under 
a vigorous early discipline; but not near so many, as is 



13 

generally supposed. The truth is, there is a mistaken 
tenderness which daily interferes with the health giv- 
ing economy of heaven. Too many parents, instead 
of building upon the foadtlation which God has laid, 
first subvert that foundation by misplaced indulgencies, 
and then vainly attempt to build among the ruins. 
They cross and perplex nature so much, in her efforts 
to make their children strong and healthy, that she at 
length refuses to do any thing, and the doating parents 
are left to patch up the shattered and punv constitu- 
tion as well as they can, with tonics and essences. In 
this way, not a few young men of good talents, are 
rendered physically incapable of pursuing their stud- 
ies to any advantage. They can never bear the 
fatigue of close arid long continued application. The 
mind would gladly work, but the earthly tabernacle is 
so extremely frail, that every vigorous effort shakes it 
to the foundation. It is like setting up the machinery 
of a furnace, in a mere shed, without studs or braces 
or like attempting to raise the steam for a large ship, 
in a tin boiler. Whatever talents a youth may possess, 
he can accomplish but little in the way of study, with- 
out a good constitution to sustain his mental efforts; 
and such a constitution is not a blessing to be enjoyed 
of course. Like almost every other gift of heaven, it 
is to be obtained by human providence, and in the use 
of means adapted to the end. How many who begin 
well, ultimately fail of eminence and usefulness, 
through excessive tenderness, and for want of skill and 
care in their early physical education, it is impossible 
to say; but that many a young man is doomed to lin- 
gering imbecility, or to a premature grave by this kind 



14 

of mismanagement; and that the subject on which I 
have hazarded the foregoing remarks, ii intimately 
connected with the vital interests of the church and 
the state, will not, I think, be questioned. 

One thing more, I deem iflmportant to say, before 
I dismiss the present topic. The finest constitution, the 
growth of many years, may be ruined in a few months. 
However good the health of a student may be when 
he enters college, it requires much care and pains to 
preserve it; and there is a very common mistake as to 
the real cause why so many fail. Hard study has all 
the credit of undermining many a constitution, which 
would have sustained twice as much application 
and without injury too, by early rising and walking, 
and by keeping up a daily acquaintance with the saw 
and the axe. Worthless in themselves, then, as are 
the elements which compose this mortal frame, so es- 
sential are its healthful energies to the operations of 
mind, that so long as the body and soul remain united, 
too much care can hardly be bestowed upon the 
former for the sake of the latter. 

The second great branch of education is intellectual; 
and this, it must be confessed is vastly more important 
and difficult than the first. It is the intelligent and 
immortal mind, which pre-eminently distinguishes man 
from the countless forms of animated nature around 
him. It is this, which not only gives him dominion 
over them all; but raises him to an alliance with 
angels; and through grace, to converse with God him- 
self. Mysterious emanation of the Divinity! Who 
can measure its capacity, or set bounds to its progres- 
sion in knowledge? 



15 

But this intelligent and immortal principle, which 
we call mind, is not created in full strength and matu- 
rity. As the body passes slowly through infancy and 
childhood, so does the mind. Feeble at first, it 'grows 
with the growth and strengthens with the strength' of 
the corporeal system. Destitute alike of knowledge 
at their birth, the children of one family, or genera- 
tion, have, in this respect, no advantage over those of 
another. All, the high as well as the low, the rich as 
well as the poor, have every thing to learn. No one 
was ever born a Newton, or an Edwards. It is patient, 
vigorous and long continued application that makes the 
great mind. All must begin with the simplest ele- 
ments of knowledge, and advance from step to step in 
nearly the same manner. Thus native talent in a child, 
may be compared to the small capital with which a 
young merchant begins in trade. It is not his fortune, 
but only the means of making it. Or it may be lik- 
ened to a quarry of fine marble, or to a mine of the 
precious metals. The former, never starts up spon- 
taneously into Cyprian Venuses nor does the latter, 
of its own accord, assume the shape and value of a 
shining currency. Much time and labour and skill are 
requisite, to fashion the graceful statue, and to refine 
and stamp the yellow treasure. 

In every system of education, two things should be 
kept steadily in view: -first, that the mind itself is to 
be formed; is to be gradually expanded and strength- 
ened into vigorous manhood, by the proper exercise of 
its faculties; and secondly, that it is to be enriched and 
embellished with various knowledge. In practice, 
however, these two things cannot be separated. For 



16 

* 

at the same time, that the plastic hand of education 
is strengthening and enlarging the mind, by subjecting 
it to severe and sometimes painful discipline, this very 
exercise, is continually enriching it with new and im- 
portant ideas. Thus, to illustrate the point by a plain 
similitude, we do not, when we begin with the child, 
find the intellectual temple already built and waiting 
only to be furnished; but we have got to lay the foun- 
dation, and carry up the walls, and fashion the porti- 
cos and arches, while we are carving the ornaments, 
and bringing in all that is requisite to finish the edifice 
and furnish the apartments. That, then, must obvi- 
ously be the best system of mental education, which 
does most to develope and strengthen the intellectual 
powers, and which pours into the mind the richest 
streams of science and literature. The object of 
teaching should never be, to excuse the student 
from thinking and reasoning; but to learn him how 
to think and to reason. You can never make your 
son, or your pupil a scholar, by drawing his diagrams, 
measuring his angles, finding out his equations and trans- 
lating his Majora. No. He must do all these things 
for himself. It is his own application that is to give 
him distinction. It is climbing the hill of science by 
dint of effort and perseverance and not being carried 
up on other men's shoulders. 

Let every youth, therefore, early settle it in his 
mind, that if he would ever be any thing, he has got 
to make himself; or in other words, to rise by personal 
application. Let him always try his own strength, and 
try it effectually, before he is allowed to call upon 
Hercules. Put him first upon his own invention; send 



17 

him back again and again to the resources of his own 
mind, and make him feel, that there is nothing too 
hard for industry and perseverance to accomplish. 
In his early and timid flights, let him know that 
stronger pinions are near and ready to sustain him, but 
only in case of absolute necessity. * When in the rug- 
ged paths of science, difficulties which he cannot sur- 
mount impede his progress, let him be helped over 
them; but never, let him think of being led, when he 
has power to walk without help nor of carrying his 
ore to another's furnace, when he can melt it down in 
his own. To excuse our young men from painful'rnental 
labour, in a course of liberal education, would be about 
as wise, as to invent easier cradle springs for the con- 
veyance of our children to school, or softer cushions 
for them to sit on at home, in order to promote their 
growth and give them vigorous constitutions. By 
adopting such methods, in the room of those distin- 
guished men, to whom we hav^been accustomed to 
look for sound literary and theological instruction; for 
wise laws and the able administration of justice, our 
pulpits and courts and professorships and halls of legis- 
lation, would soon be filled, or rather disgraced, by a 
succession of weak and rickety pretenders. 

In this view of the subject, it becomes a very nice 
not to say difficult question, how far it is expedient to 
simplify elementary books in our primary schools; but 
more especially, in the advanced stages of a liberal 
education. I am aware, that much may be said in 
favour of the simplest and easiest lessons for children; 
and I freely admit, that several elementary writers of 
the present day, are entitled to much credit for what 
3 



18 

they have done in this humble, though highly impor- 
tant sphere. I am convinced, however, that even 
here the simplifying process has been carried too far. 
The learner, in many cases, receives too much assist- 
ance from his author. Little or nothing is left him to 
find out by his own study arid ingenuity. His feelings 
are interested and his memory is taxed; but his judg- 
ment is not called into exercise; his invention is not 
put to the test, and of course, his mind does not grow. 
Moreover; too many, who would be thought stu- 
dents of a distinguished rank, by having their abridg- 
ments arid elements and conversations and other pa- 
tented stereotype continually before them, early im- 
bibe the persuasion, that almost any science may be 
mastered in a few weeks; and, of course, that the 
time which used to be spent upon languages, the ma- 
thematics and other branches of a public education, 
was little better than thrown away. Even in our 
Colleges, and partljfj am apt to think from the same 
cause, there is much complaint of needless prolixity 
and obscurity, in some of the larger classical books. 
It seems to be taken for granted, that every thing 
should be made as plain and easy for the learner as 
possible. Hence, to be held in check during a long 
and painful hour or more, by a single proposition in 
Euclid, is considered an intolerable hardship by those, 
who dislike nothing so much as close and slowly pro- 
ductive thinking. It seems never to have occurred 
to their minds, that this is the very kind of exercise, 
which is indispensable, to give scope and energy to the 
intellectual power*. 



19 

In itself considered, it would be very agreeable, no 
doubt, to master conic sections, quadratic equations, 
spherics and fluxions, all in a month. But if this 
could be done, the student would lose incomparably 
more, than he could possibly gain by the saving of 
time and labour. He would lose nearly all the ad- 
vantage which he now derives, from a long course of 
severe mental discipline. Indeed, could all the fields 
of science and literature be explored in a few weeks, 
or months; could some new method be invented to 
supersede the necessity of hard study altogether, the 
consequences would be truly deplorable. That hour 
would mark the boundaries of human improvement. 
From that moment, the march of mind would be ret- 
rograde. Within one generation, there would be no 
giants left in the earth; for how could the race be 
perpetuated, without the aliment which has in time 
past added so many cubits to their stature? Once re- 
lease man from the necessity of bringing his powers 
into vigorous action, and nothing could prevent him 
from sinking into sloth and imbecility. 

Let me here, in connexion with the foregoing re- 
marks, offer a few thoughts upon the method of 
teaching by lectures; a mode which is so highly and 
deservedly popular in the most flourishing institutions 
of our own country, as well as in all the foreign Univer- 
sities. Without lecturers, in various branches of science, 
no College could maintain a respectable standing for 
a single year; and it is greatly to be wished, that more 
professorships might be founded in most of our public 
seminaries. But even here, there are certain limits, 
beyond which it would not be wise, nor safe to go. 



20 

It is easy to see, that so much of a four years resi- 
dence in College, might be taken up in hearing lectures, 
as to leave but little time for hard study. Nor is this 
all. When a young man knows, that he is surrounded 
by distinguished professors, who are all the while 
thinking and writing for his benefit, he will be apt to 
excuse himself from close application, and to rest 
contented with what he can take down, or remember 
in the Lecture-room. This arises from that kind of 
vis inertia, which must be reckoned among the laws of 
our fallen nature. We are, for the most part, so ex- 

tremelv averse to mental effort, that if we can find 

j 

substitutes to trim the midnight lamp, we shall em- 
ploy them, even in spite of conscience and our better 
judgment. Who is there that would not prefer tak- 
ing as many eagles as he wants from the hands of the 
coiner, to bringing up the ore from the dark caverns 
of Potosi, and carrying it through the mint by the 
sweat of his own brow? Let every student, then, be 
on his guard against those temptations to indolence, 
which lurk beneath some of his highest privileges. 
Let him be thankful for the assistance of able pro- 
fessors, but let him depend more upon his own indus^ 
try than upon them. It were better for a young man 
never to hear a lecture in College, than to estimate his 
attainments by the amount of instruction which he 
receives, rather than by his own diligence and success 
in study. 

I cannot dismiss the present topic, without advert- 

ino 1 to the new modes of itinerant lecturing, which are 

o . 

becoming extremely fashionable in various parts of 
our country. To condemn them in the gross, would 



21 

be doing injustice to some individuals of distinguished 
merit: for it cannot be denied, that they have reduced 
much valuable information, to a cheap and portable 
form, and have in this way contributed to diffuse a 
taste for science and literature among all classes of 
people. These are honourable exceptions; but what 
shall we say of those pedantic smatterers in every 
thing, who are coming up upon the breadth of the 
land; whose advertisements stare us in the face from 
a thousand hand-bills and news-papers; who are ready 
to promise, and if you please, to bind themselves for 
a very trifling consideration, not only to point out a 
much shorter road, than even a royal one, to the tem- 
ple of fame., but to conduct their marvelling followers 
to the very pinnacle, before the disciples of Bacon, 
Newton and Reid can fairly begin to rise, by the an- 
cient steep and rugged path. What need, according 
to these wonderworking teachers, of six, or ten years 
study, when they can lay open all the arena of sci- 
ence in half as many weeks or evenings! Nay so far 
is this literary necromancy sometimes carried, that 
even a single lecture is expected to do more for the 
awe stricken tyro, than he could gain by months of 
the closest application in the old way. While I ap- 
peal to your own observation, for the correctness of 
this statement, I am far from wishing to hold up any 
meritorious individual, to public reprobation, or con- 
tempt. Let every one receive the just reward of his 
ingenuity and usefulness. Equally foreign is it from 
my present design, to represent all attempts at im- 
provement, in the methods of teaching, as visionary 
and hopeless. I believe, on the contrary, that great 



22 

improvements are yet to be made, and that even now, 
writing, geography and some other branches, are much 
more advantageously taught than they were twenty 
years ago. But I have no hesitation in pronouncing, 
a great part of what is pompously styled lecturing, 
upon natural philosophy, chemistry, astronomy, history, 
mnemonics and the like, the most arrant quackery, 
that ever disgraced the records of learning in New 
England. It is the mere froth and sediment or, 
shall I not rather say, it is the sulphurated hydrogen 
and carbonic acid of science and literature. So far is 
it from raising the general standard of education, that 
its direct tendency is to discourage application, to fos- 
ter pedantry, and to beget a general contempt for that 
long and tedious process, by which men have hitherto 
risen to eminence in general knowledge, and in all the 
learned professions. 

I do not however mention these time and book and 
labour saving expedients, as if there was any very se- 
rious cause of alarm from this quarter. These Pro- 
tean forms of literary quackery, cannot hold the 
ascendency long in any enlightened community. And 
in spite of their present claims to public favour, it 
cannot be doubted, that intellectual education, in most 
of its branches, is steadily on the advance. Great 
light, has within the last thirty years, been thrown 
upon the science of mind, and the present ardour of 
philosophical speculation, promises still more brilliant 
results. There is, upon the whole, a steady and 
mighty advance in the great empire of cultivated in- 
tellect, which we trust nothing will seriously impede, 
and to which no definite limits can be assigned. 



In connexion with this part of our subject, or 
rather in continuation of it, I cannot help calling your 
attention for a moment, to those rapid and splendid 
conquests of general science, which shed such a glory 
upon the age in which we live. What scholastic en- 
trenchment is there which she has not carried what 
moss-grown battlement on which she has not planted 
her standard? What height is there which she has 
not surveyed what depth has she not explored? 
What desert of sand, or snow, has she not traversed 
what arctic sea or streight has she not navigated 
what ice of four thousand winters has she not seen 
what mountain or heavenly parallax has she not meas- 
ured what mineral has escaped her search what 
stubborn resistances in the great field of experiment, 
has she not overcome what substance has she not 
found means to break, or fuse, or solve, or convert into 
gas? ^ 

It is indeed wonderful to think, how the boundaries 
of human knowledge are by the aid, and under the 
directing eye of human intellect, extending in every 
direction. Every camp that is lighted for the pur- 
poses of discovery in one-department, sheds a portion 
of its radiance upon some other, or perhaps upon ma- 
ny others at the same time: and thus, by the inter- 
mingling and reflection of rays from so many points, 
the progress of discovery is greatly and increasingly 
facilitated. Objects which fifty years ago were 
scarcely visible in the dim horizon, are now left by its 
retrocession far within the vast circumference. The 
ever busy hand of experiment is daily laying open 
new wonders and making new discoveries in air, earth 



24 

and water. Sotne of the great agents of nature, 
which had been at work in secret from the foundation 
of the world, have recently been detected in their 
mysterious operations, and made subservient to the 
health and convenience of man. Science has scaled 
those awful barriers, which less than a century ago, 
it would have been thought the height of madness 
and impiety to attempt; and she is now successfully 
exploring far wider regions beyond, than were ever 
included in her ancient dominions. Thus while the 
astronomer is polishing his glasses, finding out the lon- 
gitude, watching the return of the comets, and looking 
for new constellations in the blue depths of ether, the 
mechanical philosopher is lengthening his levers, per- 
fecting his screws and pullies, and combining and con- 
centrating all the prodigious energies of fire and wa- 
ter. And last, but not least, the chemist is rejoicing 
in the midst of his newly discovered attractions, affin- 
ities and antipathies: and if in subjecting every known 
substance to his acids, his blow-pipe and his defla- 
grator, he has not yet converted the baser metals into 
gold, he seems to be in a fair way, at least, of trans- 
muting charcoal into diamonds.* 

The train of our meditations, falls in so naturally 
here, with the following bright and philosophical an- 
ticipations of a distinguished writer, that I shall offer 
no apology for laying them before you in his own 
words. Speaking of the progressive improvement of 
the human race, he mentions by way of example, the 
history of mathematical science, in which the advan- 

* I here allude to some very interesting experiments, by Professor Silliman of Yale College, 
of which he has given a particular account, in the American Journal of Science and Arts: Vol. 
V. and VI. 



25 

ces of discovery may be measured with greater pre- 
cision than in any other. 

"Those elementary truths of geometry and of as- 
tronomy," he remarks, "which, in India and Egypt, 
formed an occult science, upon which an ambitious 
priesthood. founded its influence, were become, in the 
times of Archimedes and Hipparchus, the subjects 
of common education in the public schools of Greece. 
In the last century,..a few yeafs of study were suffi- 
cient for comprehending all that Archimedes and Hip- 
parchus knew; and, at present, two years employed 
under an able teacher, carry the student beyond those 
conclusions, which limited the inquiries of Leibnitz 
and of Newton. Let any person reflect on these facts: 
let him follow the immense chain which connects the 
inquiries of Euler with those of a priest of Memphis; 
let him .observe, at each epoch, how genius outstrips 
the present age, and how it is overtaken by medioc- 
rity in the next; he will perceive, that nature has fur- 
nished us with the means of abridging and facilitating 
our intellectual labour, and that there is no reason for 
apprehending that such simplifications can ever have 
an end. He will perceive, that at the moment when 
a multitude of particular solutions, and of insulated 
facts, begin to distract the attention, and to overcharge 
the memory, the former gradually lose themselves in 
one general method, and the latter unite in one gen- 
eral law; and that these generalizations, continually 
succeeding one to another, like the successive multipli- 
cations of a number by itself, have no other limit, 
than that infinity which the human faculties are una- 
ble to comprehend." 

How cheering, how ennobling is this intellectual 
march of our species! Who but must aspire to a place 
4 



26 

in the ranks, if not to the honour of bearing a stand- 
ard? Who is there, that will not contribute by every 
proper means in his power, to facilitate so illustrious 
a march; to elevate, expand and strengthen the im- 
mortal mind, as it still presses on in the path of dis- 
covery, and looking upward, pants for a wider range, 
a clearer vision, and worthier attainments in a brighter 
world? 

The third and last great branch of education is 
moral I use the word moral here, in the largest 
sense, as comprehending all the instruction, restraints 
and discipline which are requisite, for the government 
of the passions, the moulding of the affections, the 
formation of an enlightened conscience and the ren- 
ovation of the heart. I do not merely say that this 
branch is indispensable for in a setose it is every thing, 
What would a finely cultivated mind, united to the 
best physical constitution be, without moral principle? 
What but mere brute force, impelled by the combin- 
ed and terrible energies of a perverted understanding 
and a depraved heart? How much worse than phys- 
ical imbecility, is strength employed in doing evil? 
How much more to be dreaded than the most pro- 
found ignorance, is a high state of mental cultivation, 
when once men have broken away from the control 
of conscience and the Bible. The reign of terror and 
atheism, under whose bloody seal the demon of an- 
archy once presided over a great and polished metrop- 
olis, affords so good an illustration here, that I hope I 
shall be indulged in the hackneyed allusion. What 
availed all the erudition of the National Institute, and 
all the learning of the Encyclopediasts, in the hands 
of men, who could bow the knee to the meretricious 
goddess of reason, and write over the tomb, that death 



27 

is an eternal sleep? It was not the blind and unlet- 
tered frenzy of the multitude, but the cool and calcu- 
lating genius of infidel philosophy, which put the 
wheels of revolution in motion in France; and it was 
the friction, occasioned by that tremendous impulse, 
which set the whole machinery of the government on 
fire, and burnt down the palace, the altar and the 
throne together. Now, take away all the restraints, 
and sanctions of religion, and something like this might 
be expected to happen in any state, and in spite of 
the highest intellectual attainments. Without the 
fear of God nothing can be secure for one moment. 

O 

Without the control of moral and religious principle, 
education is a drawn and polished sword, in the hands 
of a gigantic maniac. In his madness he may fall 
upon its point, or bathe it in the blood of the innocent. 
Great and highly cultivated talents, allied to skepti- 
cism, or infidelity, are the right arm that "scatters 
firebrands, arrows and death." After all the dreams 
of human perfectibility, and all the hosannas which 
have been profanely lavished upon reason, philosophy 
and literature, who, but for the guardianship of relig- 
ion, could protect his beloved daughters, or be safe 
in his own house for one night? What would civil 
government be in the profound sleep of conscience, 
and in the absence of right moral habits and feelings 
what, but an iron despotism on the one hand, or in- 
toxicated anarchy on the other? 

Let any system of education, which leaves out God 
and the scriptures, prevail for a short time only, in 
your families, schools and Colleges, and what would 
be the consequences? How long would you have any 
domestic circles to love, or to live in? How long 
would children reverence their parents, or listen to the 



28 

voice of their teachers? The truth is, moral habits 
and religious sanctions, cannot be dispensed with. 
The world would be one vast and frightful theatre of 
misery and crime without them. What anxious and 
unremitting care, then, should be bestowed upon the 
religious education of children. How assiduously 
should the fond parent labour to imbue the mind of 
the little prattler upon his knee, with the knowledge 
and fear of God. It is needless to say, that if you do 
not sow the good seed, and sow it early, the enemy 
will be sure to preoccupy the ground: and if you sleep 
after it is sown, he will not fail of scattering tares 
among the wheat. If, then, your "heart's desire and 
prayer to God" is, that your son may be virtuous, 
useful and pious, "train him up in the way he should 
go" teach him from the cradle to obey you in all 
things; to govern his own passions, and to exercise all 
the kind and generous feelings of his heart. Let that 
system of religious education which is begun in the 
family, be carried into the primary school, from thence 
into the academy and up to the public seminary. 
Such a course of moral instruction, is the more im- 
portant in this country, on account of the free and 
republican character of all our institutions. Our civil 
government is happily a government of moral influ- . 
ence. It derives its supremacy not so much from the 
pains and penalties of the statute book,, as from the 
virtue and intelligence of the people. Now the per- 
manent safety of such a community, demands a high 
tone of moral and religious principle in the great mass 
of the governed; and it must be obvious, I think, that 
the freer any state is, the more virtue is necessary to 
secure private rights, and to preserve the public tran- 
quillity. A government of opinion, founded on the 



29 

morality of the Gospel, exerts a silent and -invisible 
influence, which like the great law of attraction keeps 
every thing in its place, without seeming to exert any 
influence at all. 

Now, as the literary institutions of every country, 
must receive their shape and character from the gen- 
ius of the government, the management of a College 
in our own free and happy land, must be the unseen 
efficiency of moral influence, much more than the 
frowning shall, or shall not of the written law. But 
how can this influence be established and maintained 
over the natural restlessness and ardency of youth? 
Clearly in no other way but that which I have just 
pointed out. They must be brought under the sway 
of an enlightened conscience arid of good habits in 
early childhood. They must in the strictest sense of 
the terra be religiously educated from their most 
tender years. 

There is another view of the point before us, which 
immensely enhances the importance of a religious ed- 
ucation. If human existence was bounded by this 
'inch or two of time,' or if nothing which we can do 
for our children could have any influence upon their 
eternal destiny, the consequences of faithfulness, or 
unfaithfulness would be comparatively trifling. But 
when we think of their immortality of what it is to 
rise and shine and sing or to sink and wail in outer 
darkness forever, and then remember that we have 
the keeping of their precious souls, how can we help 
trembling under the weight of such a responsibility? 
Every system of education should have reference to 
two worlds; but chiefly to the future, because the pre- 
sent is only the infancy of being, and the longest life 
bears no proportion to endless duration. Every in- 



sfnicfor should keep distinctly in view, and remind Im 
pupils daily of that long, long hereafter from which a 
thousand earthly ages will shrink into nothing. 

Viewed in the light of eternity, and as qualifications 
for the kingdom of God, what is health and what are 
talents of the highest order? What are the richest 
literary acquisitions? They may dazzle him, but noth- 
ing can shine without holiness beyond the grave. It 
is moral worth, it is piety of heart, or the want of it, 
which will fix the destiny of the undying soul. With- 
out the image of God, the stupendous intellect of 
Gabriel would be nought, but mighty rebellion and 
suffering to all eternity. Nor on the other hand, is 
there a human soul, bearing that image, though dwell- 
ing in the most humble clay, and merely looking 
through the grates of its prison, but that will ere 
3ong rise to glory and "walk in white" and sing with 
angels. What prayers, what instructions, what un- 
wearied efforts then, should be employed in the relig- 
ious education of every child. It is true, indeed, that 
no human agency however long or faithfully exerted, 
can give a new heart: but it is equally true, that God 
employs instruments to accomplish all his gracious 
purposes. He works by means, no less in the moral 
than in the natural world. The means he has in this 
case prescribed. In numberless instances has he made 
them effectual to the saving conversion of the soul. 
Let parents, teachers and ministers then, do their 
duty, in humble reliance on the divine promises, and 
wait in hope and prayer for the blessing. May a 
worm, then, like one of us, aspire to the* honour and 
happiness of guiding immortals to heaven of assist- 
ing to prepare them for "an exceeding and eternal 
weight of glory?" Who would exchange such a priv- 



31 

ilege for the diadems of all the Caesars? This is a de- 
lightful theme. It warms and expands and elevates 
and fills with holy exultation the heart of chnstian 
benevolence. But I have already detained you so 
much longer than I intended, that instead of leaving 
room for enlargement on this point, I shall be con- 
strained to pass over in silence most of the collateral 
topics, which I had reserved for the closing pages of 
the present address. 

I am aware, that the view which I have sketched 
of the three capital branches of education, has no 
claim to originality in the general outline. Nor is 
this concession made with any reluctance. On the 
contrary, I rejoice to know, that the system which I 
would recommend, has been in high favour with the 
wise and good, ever since the Plymouth Colony found 
**a lodge in the wilderness." Our forefathers were 
fio less the friends of sound learning, than of civil and 
religious liberty. However scanty their means might 
be, it was their earnest desire to raise up men of 
stature, and not pigmies, to be their successors in 
bearing the sword of the magistrate, and the ark of 
the testimony. If they placed a high estimate upon 
natural genius and mental cultivation, it was with the 
hope that both would be made subservient to the in- 
terests of religion. Hence were the earliest and now 
most flourishing Colleges of NewEngland,dedicaled"Jo 
Christ and the Church" by their pious founders. And 
in looking over their stellated triennial records, for 
the names of those who "were of old men of renown," 
it is peculiarly animating to find, how many of them 
were as much distinguished for their piety, as for their 
talents and erudition. We confidently believe, that 
those venerable seats of science, from which the "wor- 



32 

thies" of so many generations have gone out, to bless 
and enlighten the churches, and to become the firm- 
est pillars in the state, will be more and more distin- 
guished in the annals of future times. The dedica- 
tion of which I have just spoken, was not a vain and 
empty ceremony. There was meaning in every 
word. It was the love of Christ constraining the 
heart, which prompted to extraordinary efforts and 
sacrifices, in laying the foundations of Harvard, of 
Yale, of JNassau Hall, and of Dartmouth. The same 
spirit we trust, has predominated among the founders 
of those kindred seminaries, which have more recently 
sprung up in various parts of our land. In reference 
to the Institution, which is now just rising into being 
before our eye, we heed not the reproach of weakness 
and presumption when we say, that our confident ex- 
pectations of its future growth and prosperity, rest 
chiefly upon its being consecrated to Christ and the 
Church, and being daily commended to God in so many 
closets and families. May Christ and the church be 
inseparable from all the prayers and hopes and wishes 
and gifts of its benefactors; and may 'Christ be form- 
ed in the heart of every student, the hope of glory/ 
Then, not only will it live; but be worthy to live. 
Then will the blessing of many ready to perish 
come upon its sons. 

The observations which I have made in this ad- 
dress, upon the three great branches of education, 
have so direct a bearing upon the question of age, in 
reference to entering College, that I hope I shall be 
indulged in a few additional remarks. On this subject, 
no general rule can be laid down which will apply to 
every case. Some lads have more maturity, both of 
bodv and mind, at twelve, than others have at fifteen, 



33 

or sixteen. Still, there is a general order of nature, 
which should be carefully studied and observed. By 
strictly attending to this, \ve shall be able to fix, with 
a good degree of precision, upon the age when the 
generality of youth, are physically and mentally pre- 
pared for admission into a public seminary. This, I 
am fully convinced, is not so early as parental partial- 
ity and young ambition are apt to suppose. Neither 
the physical constitution and health, nor the intellect- 
ual powers, nor the moral habits of a mere child, 
are sufficiently established and consolidated, to render 
it either profitable, or safe for him, to encounter the 
many difficulties and temptations of a thorough classical 
course. All experience proves, that not one lad in a 
hundred, at the age of thirteen, or fourteen, can 
grapple with natural and mental philosophy, or with 
the higher branches of mathematics. In order to do 
this, the mind must have attained to something like 
maturity, and this it does not ordinarily do, till near 
the close of minority. If a student can graduate at 
twenty, or even a year or two later, he ought, in 
almost every case to be satisfied. His education is 
much more likely to be thorough, than if he had en- 
tered very young. It cannot be doubted that many 
have lost the greater part of their junior year, as well 
as much of the sophomore and senior, merely by en- 
tering college too early, and being driven on through 
studies to which their minds were not yet equal. 
Many, also, by too much confinement, and by intense 
application in the greenness of their growth, have 
early closed both their studies and their lives together. 
Nor are these the only objections to premature ma- 
triculation. A child can rarely form a correct esti- 
mate of the value of a good education so that if he 
5 



34 

was able to press on, with the older competitors, he 
is not so likely to feel the importance of diligence in 
study. And what may be more than all, is the ex- 
posure of his morals, at the critical age, when he is 
most likely to be led into temptation. 

To the question, 'what then shall we do with our 
sons, when they are fitted for College at an early age? 7 
I answer, put them upon a preparatory course, which 
will require more time, by embracing a wider range 
than is commonly taken. In some respects, I know, 
a student may be too well fitted, but there are stud- 
ies, particularly those which require thought and inven- 
tion, on which I should think he might bestow a year 
or two, without much danger. Perhaps the better 
way, however, in most cases would be, to reserve a 
considerable portion of time between the ages of 
twelve and sixteen, for manual labour. Nothing is so 
likely to give the lad a good constitution, and make 
him willing to study, as being obliged to wipe the sweat 
from his own brow through the long summer months, 
and to learn a little from his own experience, how much 
toil it costs to carry him through college. 

Another topic on which I had intended to enlarge, 
is the education of indigent pious youth for the Gospel 
ministry. And I was the more desirous of stating my 
views somewhat at length, on account of the benevo- 
lent origin and leading design of this institution. But 
I must not trespass longer on your patience, than just 
to glance at the subject. A new era in the history of 
the American church is begun, by means of those 
efforts which are now in successful operation, to ed- 
ucate the pious poor, and prepare them for the holy 
ministry. Hundreds of young men of promising tal- 
ents, are at this moment members of our academies 



35 

and Colleges, who but for the hand of Christian char- 
ity would have remained in their native obscurity; and 
thousands more will assuredly be assisted by the same 
bounty to acquire a competent education for the sacred 
office. This, certainly, is one of the animating signs 
of the times in which it is our privilege to live. Why 
were not education societies thought of fifty or a 
hundred years ago? They might be reckoned among 
the glories of any age. But experience has already 
proved, that no ordinary judgment and discretion are 
necessary, in selecting talents and piety from the shop 
and the field in the distribution of hard earned char- 
ity and in the general superintendance of a long list of 
beneficiaries. It is not every pious youth, who has 
talents for the pastoral office, or the missionary service. 
Some, no doubt, are very devoted christians and very 
desirous of becoming preachers too, whom no pains or 
expense could ever qualify for the desk. Such may 
think it hard to be rejected, especially if some of their 
indigent companions are taken; but there ought to be 
firmness and independence enough, to follow the dic- 
tates of an enlightened judgment in an affair of so 
much importance. It can be no advantage to any 
young man, to be taken from the sphere in which God 
designed he should act, and placed in one which he 
can never fill: and most certainly, we have no right to 
waste the sacred deposits of charity, upon well ascer- 
tained imbecility, or dullness, though allied to the 
purest motives in the applicant. Nor, in my opinion 
would it be wise, even if funds were ever so ample, to 
recal our industrious, indigent young men from the 
plow, or to bid them lay down their tools, and then 
carry them through all the stages of education, with- 
out requiring any thing more of them, than a diligent 



36 

attention to their studies. The change would, in the 
first place, greatly endanger their health. Active and 
laborious habits cannot be exchanged at once, for the 

O 7 

sedentariness of the school-room, with either comfort 
or safety: and why should not the beneficiary make 
his needful exercise, contribute if he can, towards his 
own support? 

Besides; to excuse him for several years from all 
labour and hardship, would, in a great measure, dis- 
qualify him for the very service in which it must be 
the duty of many to engage. We want young men 
for the ministry, who are inured to self denial and who 
will be ready to "endure hardness as good soldiers of 
Jesus Christ," wherever he may send them. We 
want soldiers for this holy war, who will cheerfully 
march to the frontiers, and pitch their tents in the 
dark interminable forests of the west and south. We 
want missionaries to go forth and gather congregations 
from the cabins of the wilderness, and to carry the 
Gospel to far distant pagan millions. Now what is 
the best wdy, to prepare indigent piety for these ar- 
duous and self-denying labours? Certainly not to re- 
move it ffom the straw cot, and pillow it upon the 
softest down. Certainly not to excuse the young man 
from all concern about his own support. On the con- 
trary, he ought to be distinctly informed, when he 
lays down the hoe and the broad axe, that he is to 
help himself as far as he can, and to expect no more 
charitable aid, than his necessities may absolutely re- 
quire. That youth is not worthy of being assisted by 
the late and early earnings of pious indigence, nor 
even by the bounty of Christian affluence, who is not 
willing to endure privations, and to make every rea- 
sonable exertion in his own behalf. 



37 

Moreover, entire reliance upon charity, during sev- 
eral years of the forming age, can hardly fail of im- 
pairing, if it .does not destroy that independence of 
mind, which is essential in every high and difficult en- 
terprize. If such a state of dependence is not quite 
synonymous with anxious servility, it is too much to 
expect from it, that free arid independent develope- 
ment of talents and designs, which gives the brightest 
promise of future usefulness. The best intentioned 
patrons of indigent merit, are sometimes capricious? 
and who in the midst of conflicting caprices, and earn- 
estly desirous of pleasing all, can act like himself? 
Better, therefore, to struggle and fare hard through 
every stage of education, than for the sake of being 
wholly supported, to run the hazard of acquiring a 
kind of tame neutrality of character in such a school. 

I hope that in speaking thus freely, I shall not be 
thought indifferent to the comfort of those pious de- 
pendent youth, on whom the hopes of the church are 
now fixed. Let them receive all needed assistance. 
Few, probably, are in danger of being injured by receiv- 
ing too much, while owing to the scantiness of our char- 
ities, many are subjected to very great embarrassments. 
In the struggles and discouragements of this latter 
class, I feel, and trust I always shall feel a lively inter- 
est. Haud ignarus mali miseris succurrere disco. 

But if I am not mistaken, the views which I have 
ventured to express on this highly important and del- 
icate subject, accord with the sentiments which are 
now generally entertained, by the enlightened friends 
of charitable education; and they afford a sufficient 
answer to a popular objection against the system. 
We are charged with demanding the widow's mite, 
and the poor servant girl's wages, to support a host of 
healthy young men in ease and idleness. This is un- 



38 

true. We demand nothing. We are anxious, indeed, 
to increase the number of well educated ministers by 
bringing forward the pious poor, and are not ashamed 
to ask the Christian public to assist us. But we require 
the beneficiaries to be saving, and to rely on their own 
earnings as far as their health and circumstances will 
allow. All we ask is, that when they have done what 
they can, they may be helped forward by the hand 
of charity. 

These I take to have been the views of the benev- 
olent founders of this Institution. They intended to 
help those, who are willing to help themselves. 
While, therefore, the indolent and the extravagant 
will be scrupulously rejected, the deserving poor of 
every denomination, who have respectable talents and 
desire to consecrate them to God in the ministry, will 
be cheerfully patronized. The funds of the Institu- 
tion, indeed, will not enable the Trustees to do all 
they could wish; but they rely on the further aid of 
that Christian benevolence which is enabling them to 
do so much; and the hope is indulged, that arrange- 
ments may ere long be made, in connexion with the 
seminary to furnish convenient, health giving and pro- 
ductive labour, for all the indigent students, whether 
they have the ministry in view or not. And here, let 
me just remark, that I think poor young men of good 
talents, who are not counted pious, have been too litj 
tie regarded in the benevolent plans of this remarka- 
ble age. Why should they not be educated with the 
hope, that God will change their hearts and make 
them eminently useful? And why to this end, should 
not funds be raised to assist them? Who can tell 
how much they might do, to bless the state, the church 
and the world? 



39 

In looking round, this day, from the spot where wa 
now stand; in thinking of the past and then of the 
future, what emotions of gratitude and hope fill the be- 
nevolent mind! Whence these walls built in troublous 
times these goodly edifices which greet the eye and 
gladden the heart from afar? Whence this youthful 
band of brethren, dwelling together in unity, improv- 
ing their minds by an elevated course of study, and so 
many of them walking, as we trust, in the "ways of 
pleasantness, in the paths of peace?" Whence all that 
our eyes now see and our ears hear? Verily God 
hath heard the prayer of his servants and blessed the 
work of their hands. Hitherto, may they say, hath 
the Lord helped us! 

And will he frown all that is before us into ruins 
and forgetfulness? Will he forsake this comely daugh- 
ter of Zion in her tender years, and after giving her 
so many tokens of his favour? We cannot believe it. 
He may afflict her still more, but surely he will cher- 
ish her growth, he will comfort her heart, he will raise 
her up friends. Under his smiles and sustained by 
his arm, she will hold on her way, and as she advan- 
ces, will scatter blessings with both her hands upon 
many, who are famishing for the bread of life. She 
will not envy her elder sisters, who have riches, ward- 
robes and more attendants and are moving in higher 
spheres than her own: but she will emulate their vir- 
tues, rejoice in their prosperity, strive to deserve their 
affection, and seek for herself that "adorning of a 
meek and quiet spirit, which in the sight of God is of 
great price." In this quiet, modest and beneficent 
course, who can wish her any thing but success? Where 
is the hand, that would rudely thrust her back, or the 
heart that can triumph in her disappointments, that 



40 

can rejoice in her afflictions? But should she be 're- 
viled, let her not revile again.' Should one 'cheek be 
smitten let her turn the other also!' Let the same mind 
be in her which was in Christ Jesus arid she can have 
nothing to fear. 

As we cast our eyes down the long track of time, 
from this consecrated eminence, how many bright and 
interesting visions croud upon our view. We, indeed, 
shall soon be gone; but other generations will come, and 
what may they not enjoy and accomplish, canopied as 
they will be, by those Arcadian skies, invigorated by 
the pure breath of the mountains, and inspired to 
rapture and to song as they look abroad upon all the 
riches, life and beauty of this great amphitheatre? 
How many favoured sons of this institution, will hold 
sweet converse here, with the muse that loves the 
hill of Ziori! How many statesmen, historians and 
orators will be trained on this ground, to shine in sen- 
ates, to grace the bar, to adorn the bench of justice, 
and to record the doings of the wise, the brave and 
the good. But more than all that has been mention- 

o 

ed, what may not this seminary do for the churches 
at home what victories may she not gain in distant 
lands, by sending forth her sons under the banner of 
the cross, and clad in armour of heavenly temper to 
fight the battles of her King? 

Who is there in this assembly, that is not ready to 
answer, May these glowing anticipations be more than 
realized, in the future prosperity and usefulness of this 
Institution? May it live to gladden and bless the church 
through all future generations; and in that world, 
where holiness is perfect and knowledge is transcend- 
ant, may all its founders, patrons and friends meet and 
dwell together forever in the presence of God and 
the Lamb. 



PREACHED JULT'lZ, 1807, 



AT THE 



FUNERAL 



OF THE 

REV. ALEXANDER MACWHORTER, D. D. 

SENIOR PASTOR OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, 
IN 

NEWARK, 

* 

NEW-JERSEY. 

BY EDWARD D. 'GRIFFIN, A. M, 

SURVIVING PASTOR OF SAID CHURCH. 



NEW-YORK: 



PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY S. COULD) 
OPPOSITE THE CITY-HALL, 

1807. 



- 






TO THE 



CONGREGATION 

UNDER THE AUTHOR'S PASTORAL CHARGE. 



MY DEAR FRIENDS, v_ 

THE following sermon, preached in memory 
of a pastor justly dear to us all, and now pub- 
lished at your request, and for your special use, 
I affectionately dedicate to you. 

In the biographical part, I have descended to a 
minuteness of detail, which I am aware would be 
uninteresting to strangers; but certainly not to 
you and the bereaved family, whose common 
gratification I have had chiefly in view. You 
will jind several pages of narrative that were o- 
mitted in the delivery, and other matter which 
was necessarily reserved till the subsequent Sab- 
bath. Neither the time nor the occasion admitted 
of presenting the entire sermon on the day of the 



IV 

interment ; but I trust no apology is necessary for 
laying the whole before you in the present form. 

That God may comfort you under your bereave- 
ment, and render this discourse in some degree use- 
ful to you, is the anxious desire and prayer of 

. 
Your affectionate Pastor, 

EDWARD D. GRIFFIN. 

Newark, Aug. 10, 1807. 






A SERMON. 



PSALM CXIL 6. 

THE RIGHTEOUS SHALL BE IN EVERLASTING 
REMEMBRANCE. 

IT is with trembling and distress that I present 
myself under this awful stroke of the Almighty, to 
address my afflicted congregation, and to mingle my 
sorrows with our widowed church. Standing in the 
place from which our friend has so often addressed 
us, and oppressed with the sight of these solemn 
badges of wo, I have no heart to speak. But duty 
has assigned my task, and I will perform it as well 
as I can. It is not to utter my own complaints that 
I have entered this house of God ; but to speak a 
word of comfort to my friends, and to execute the 
last sad office of respect and love to my departed fa- 
ther. 



The words which I have read are susceptible of a 
double construction, as the term everlasting may be 
understood either in a limited or an absolute sense. 
They import either that the righteous man shall long; 
be remembered with affection and reverence on earth, 
or that he shall be had in eternal remembrance before 
God and the inhabitants of heaven. Both positions 
may be supported as general truths ; and from the 
double meaning evidently contained in many max- 
ims, as well as predictions, of the Old Testament, es- 
pecially in those which are couched in such indefinite 
terms, we may reasonably presume that both ideas 
are expressed in these words. We shall therefore 
dwell a few moments on each. 

I. The righteous shall be long remembered with 
affection and reverence on earth. This however is 
true only as a general proposition, which admits of 
many exceptions. Piety is not the door to fame in 
the splendid circles of the great. Many of the ex- 
cellent of the earth have been overlooked in their 
life, and forgotten in their death. Thousands have 
given their bodies to the flames to gain a martyr's 
crown ; 

" Yet few remember them. They liv'd unknown, 
" Till persecution dragg'd them into fame, 
" And chas'd them up to heav'n. Their ashes flew 



" No marble tells us whither. With their names 
" No bard embalms and sanctifies his song : 
" And history, so warm on meaner themes, 
" Is cold on this."* 

Yet notwithstanding this complaint of the poet, one 
of the wisest observers of human affairs has stated it 
as a general maxim, that the memory of the just is 
blessed, but the name of the -wicked shall rot. Men 
of the world, by their intrepidity in vice and their 
impenetrable assurance, by the brilliancy and point 
of their wit, and their arts of address, may attract, 
while they live, more attention than the truly good ; 
but it is often otherwise when they are dead. The 
infidel himself, while he praises the living sinner, 
venerates the departed saint. It is not those who in 
the circles of profaneness can raise the loudest laugh 
against the religion of Christ, that posterity will 
most revere ; but the sincere worshippers of God. 
and the benefactors of mankind. While a thousand 
titled libertines, who once dazzled the croud with 
their stars and crescents, now sleep with vulgar dust, 
with names that have scarcely reached the ear of 
posterity, a Baxter, a Flavel, a Whitefield, an Ed- 
wards, a Tennent, and a Davies, live still in the af- 



* Cowper. 



fections of mankind, and are immortal. It was a 
saying of a Jewish Rabbi, founded on ancient tra- 
dition, " Whoever makes mention either of the just, 
and does not bless him, or of the wicked, and does 
not curse him, transgresses a positive precept." 
However this traditionary precept may fail to be 
observed towards the living, it is by the common 
consent of mankind observed towards the dead. 

II. The righteous shall be had in everlasting re- 
membrance before God and the inhabitants of hea- 
ven. Ten thousand ages hence, neither their per- 
sons nor their works shall be forgotten. The small- 
est act of charity which they performed, the faint- 
est sigh which they breathed for sin, the feeblest de- 
sire which they moved towards God, though long 
forgotten by themselves, shall then be remembered 
by Him. Their pious deeds shall be celebrated in 
the circles of the redeemed, and among the count- 
less millions of holy angels, when the exploits of an 
Alexander, a C<esar, and a Bonaparte, shall be for- 
gotten, or mentioned as we now mention the 

destructive feats of mischievous children ; or rather 
as we mention the actions of a Cain, a Cataline, or 
an Arnold. When these heroes shall no longer 
fill the trump of fame, and the page of history 
which transmitted their names to posterity, shall long 



since have perished in the general conflagration, the 
conflicts which these Worthies maintained with their 
own hearts in secret, and the victories which they ob- 
tained over themselves, shall make a conspicuous fig- 
ure in the annals of heaven. Then, an Alexander who 
faithfully laboured half a century in the gospel of 
Christ, will have greater fame than the Alexander 
who conquered Asia. 

But with the inhabitants of heaven we leave the 
fame of the righteous in that world ; our business is 
to preserve their name on earth, Not only is there 
a sacred pleasure in perpetuating in this world the 
memory of the great and good, but it is an essential 
benefit to society, as it gives continued force to their 
example, and awes vice by the majesty of their au- 
thority. But when one is removed who was not on- 
ly great and good, but for a long course of years ac- 
ted a conspicuous part in supporting the interests of 
literature and the Church, it is due to him, it is due 
to society, it is due to the Church of Christ, that the 
memory of his actions should be more circumstan- 
tially preserved. Such a one is fallen this day in our 
Israel : and believing that the present is a pro- 
per time to sketch the outlines of his history and cha- 
racter, I must not detain you longer by abstract re- 
marks, but must enter at once on this mournful task, 

B 
1 



6 

1 am aware that funeral eulogies are prone to de- 
generate into blind, indiscriminate praise. To a- 
void the appearance of this evil, I shall be sparing 
of general encomiums, content to let the history 
and character of my departed friend speak for them- 
selves. Fidelity on such occasions does not indeed 
require us to hunt for imperfections. I shall only 
be careful that in drawing the picture of his virtues, 
I do not lay oa my colours with so lavish a hand as 
to conceal the features I wish to present. I know 
the suspicions attached to one supposed to be pre- 
judiced by affection : I shall therefore be cautious 
what I say. Standing as I do in this scene of death, 
and by the awful remains of departed greatness, I 
will hold myself bound as by the solemnity of an 
oath, and every word shall be true according to my 
best knowledge and belief. 

DOCTOR MACWHORTER was of Scotch extrac- 
tion. His maternal ancestors were among the first 
emigrants from Scotland to the North of Ireland ; 
and the family of his father removed to the same 
country about the time of his father's birth. By 
his mother he had the honour of descending from 
martyrs. Both of her maternal grandparents fell a 
sacrifice to papal fury, in the great Irish massacre of 
1641, while England was convulsed by the civil 



7 

wars of Charles I.* None of the family survived this 
horrid scene except her mother, who, at that time an 
infant, tvas concealed by her nurse, and preserved 
from impending death. On so minute a providence 
did the future existence of this luminary- of the 
Church depend. His immediate parents, Hugh and 
Jane, lived in the county of Armagh, in the North of 
Ireland ; where his father was for many years a linen 
merchant. The eldest of their children, whose 
name was Alexander, was a son of distinguished 
talents and piety ; and being intended for the gos- 
pel ministry, spent two years at the university of 
Edinburgh. At his solicitation, the family remo- 
ved to America, about the year 1730, and settled 
in the county of Newcastle, Delaware ; where his 
father became a distinguished farmer, and an el- 
der of the Church, under the pastoral care at first 
of Mr. Hutchinson, and afterwards of Mr. Rodgers, 
now Doct. Rodgers of New- York. Alexander di- 
ed before he had completed his studies, leaving 
a most excellent character : and our future pastor, 
being born about a month after, bore his brother's 
name. But so affected were the family with their 
recent affliction, that his name was not suffered to 



* They were hanged on a tree before their own door. 



8 

be pronounced in the house for six months after 
his birth. 

The second Alexander, the youngest of eleven 
children, was born July 15, 1734. O. S. It was 
his happiness to be blessed with parents eminent 
for piety, and abundant in their labours to train 
up their children in the nurture and admonition of 
the Lord. It was their custom to devote the eve- 
ning of every Lord's day, among other seasons,, 
to this tender and interesting service ; a practice, 
which was common among pious parents of that 
age ; would God it were as common now ! He 
remembered, till the day of his death, the tender 
solicitude of a father who would often take him 
alone into the woods, and of a mother who no less 
frequently would retire with him to a private a- 
partment, to exhort him with tears, and to en- 
treat him by all the anguish of a parent's heart 
to be reconciled to God. These faithful admoni- 
tions would often awaken him to temporary seri- 
ousness and prayer ; and though they did not at once 
produce an abiding effect, they were not lost. 

In February, 1748, when he was in his 14th 
year, he was deprived of his excellent father, who 
at his death left four children, all of whom were 



many proofs of the happy effects of parental 
faithfulness. They were all communicants in the 
church, and lived and died agreeably to their pro- 
fession.* The three eldest being already settled 
in North Carolina, their mother, in the following 
autumn, removed into that State, accompanied by 
Alexander, who left his paternal estate, in Delaware, 
under the care of a guardian. Here first commen- 
ced his permanent religious impressions, under a 
sermon preached by Mr. John Brown, (one of 
those evangelical preachers who in that day were 
called A r ew Lights^} from Ps. vii. 12. If he turn 
not, he -will -whet his sivord; he hath bent his bow 
and made it ready. An arrow of a different na- 
ture reached his heart. The horrors of guilt, and 
the terrors of eternal judgment, from that moment 
assailed him, and for near three years filled him 
with indescribable distress. He used daily to re- 
pair to a copse of pines, near his brother's house, 



* The eldest of these was Nancy, married to Alexan- 
der Osborne ; the second was John j the third was Jane, 
married to John Brevard. They are all deceased. Some 
of them lived to advanced age$ and their descendants are 
still numerous in North Carolina. 

f Mr. Brown was afterwards a settled minister for ma- 
xiy years in Virginia. 



10 

v, here he resided ; and there, to use his own ex- 
pressive words, -would dasfi himself on the ground, 
looking for the earth to open and swallow him up. 
Thus the seed of truth, which had been planted by 
a father's care, and watered by a mother's tears, 
was preparing to shoot. 

After spending two or three years in Carolina, he 
took his leave, (and, as it proved, his final leave) of 
his mother, to pursue his education under the di- 
rection of his guardian.* At first he was entered 
in a private school in a small hamlet in Delaware, 
which has since grown to a village by the name 
of Newark. Thence he was removed to a pub- 
lick school at West-Nottingham, Cecil county, Ma- 
ryland, under the care of the Rev. Mr. Finley, af- 
terwards President of the College of New-Jersey. 
Here the darkness which had long involved him, 
was dispersed; and he was enabled for the first 



* Before his father's death, Doct. Rodgers, who had ta- 
ken the charge of the congregation, had remarked the pro- 
mising talents of this youth, at a time when he and the 
other children of the neighbourhood were assembled to be 
catechised by their minister. And now, after his return 
from Carolina, he received from Doct. Rodgers some af- 
fectionate attentions, which laid the foundation of that in- 
timate friendship which ever after subsisted between them. 



11 

time to rest his soul on Christ, to a degree that 
gave him confidence, shortly after, to enter into 
communion with Mr. Finley'k church. 

Having continued two years in that school, in May, 
1756, being in his 22d year, he joined the junior class 
in the College which was then in this town. Thus 
he began his publick career in science in the very 
place which was destined to be the scene of his fu- 
ture usefulness. The ground on which his youthful 
feet trod, was reserved to be the resting place of his 
weary limbs, after the labours of more than half a 
century. 

It was already determined to remove the College 
to Princeton; on which account President Burr's 
pastoral relation to this church had the year before 
been dissolved. In October of this year the College 
was removed, and Mr. Macwhorter belonged to the 
first class which graduated at Princeton. He took 
his degree in the autum of 1757, a few days after 
the lamented death of Mr. Burr. 

Having thus completed his academical studies, he 
was on the point of returning to North Carolina, to 
take his mother's counsel in regard to the future 
course of his life, when he received the afflicting news 






12 



of her death. This changed his purpose, and he en- 
tered upon the study of Divinity, under the instruc- 
tion of the Rev. William Tennent, the pious and 
justly celebrated minister of Freehold, in this State. 

In August following, (1758,) he was licensed to 
preach by the presbytery of New Brunswick, which 
sat at Princeton ; and in October was married to 
Mary dimming, daughter of Robert Gumming Esq, 
of Freehold, a respectable merchant, and high she- 
riff of the county of Momnouth. By this marriage 
he was introduced into a family connexion with his 
revered instructor, Mr. Tennent.* 



* Robert Gumming, Esq. was twice married. By the 
first marriage he had three children : the eldest was Alex- 
ander, who was a minister of the gospel for several years in 
the city of New-York, and afterwards in the Old South 
Church in the town of Boston, where he died, 1763 ; the 
second was Lawrence ; and the third was Mary (Mrs. Mac- 
whorter.) He formed a second marriage with Miss No- 
ble, daughter (by a former husband) of Mrs. Tennent. By 
her he had four children : the eldest was Catharine, mar- 
ried to the Rev. Philip Stockton ; the second was Ann, 
married to the Rev. William Schenck ; the third was John 
Noble, now General Gumming of this town ; and the fourth 
was Peggy* who died unmarried. 

Doct. Macwhorter had five children: the eldest waa 



13 

This congregation, after the dismission of Mr. 
Burr, fell into a state of unhappy division, which 
continued near four years ; some blaming the 
Presbytery for removing their pastor ; others, their 
neighbours for consenting to his removal. Certain 
unpleasant disputes which existed at the same time 
relative to the parsonage lands, were not calculated 
to allay the animosity. In the collision of interests 
and passions, too common on such occasions, the 
people were long divided between different candi- 
dates, until Mr. Macwhorter, on the 28th day of 
June, 1759, preached his first sermon to them. At 
once they fixed their eyes on him as the object of 
their united choice. 

Mr. Macwhorter had been appointed by the Sy- 
nod of New- York and Philadelphia to a mission a- 
mong his friends in North Carolina ; and with that 
view he was ordained by his Presbytery, at Cran- 



Mary, married to Samuel Beebe, Merchant, now of New- 
York. She is deceased. The second was Ann, married 
to the Rev. George Ogilvie ; the third was Alexander 
Gumming, now Counsellor at Law in this town ; th^ 
fourth was John, who was a Counsellor at Law, and died 
a few months before his father ; the fifth was Hugh Ro- 
bert, who died in infancy. 

c 



berry, on the 4th day of July.* But Providence 
jhad formed other designs concerning him. At that 
Tery meeting of Presbytery, commissioners from 
Newark appeared, and by their solicitations, second- 
ed by the influence of Mr. Tennent, obtained him 
for a supply. The people were so well satisfied 
with his ministerial qualifications, that they harmo- 
niously agreed to present him a call, and he was in- 
stalled the same summer, at the age of 25, within 
two years after he had graduated. 

In the course of his ministry, he bore an impor- 
tant part in all the leading measures, which, for near 
half a century, have been adopted, to promote the 
order and interest of the Presbyterian Church in the 
United States. 

He was among the first subscribers to the Wid- 
ow? s Fund, which was established in 1761 ; and in 
later life, was for many years a director of that be- 
nevolent institution. 

In 1764, the Synod renewed his appointment to 



* Mr. Kirkpatrick, who had been appointed to accom- 
pany him, was ordained at the same time. 



15 

the mission into North Carolina ;* which gave him 
an opportunity to revisit his family friends, from 
whom he had been separated more than 12 years. 
But this mission came near costing him his life. 
While in Carolina, he was seized with the bilious 
fever incident to the climate, which left him with 
a hectick, accompanied with expectoration of blood, 
that for two years threatened to put an early pe- 
riod to his usefulness. Yet in this scene of af- 
fliction, it pleased God, in the winter of 1764, 5, 
to encourage him with a revival of religion in his 
congregation. In the following summer, he received 
a call from the united congregations of Center and 
Poplar Tent, in North Carolina ; which, though it 
presented him an opportunity to settle among the 
children and descendants of his father, he thought 
it his duty to reject. In 1766, the state of his health 
became so critical, that he was induced to try the 
experiment of a Northern journey; and a tour which 
he made to Boston in the autumn of this year, proved 
the means of his sudden and complete restoration. 
From his first settlement in this place, he had been 
regularly . subject to an attack of the pleurisy once 



* In this mission, as well as in the one appointed by 
Congress, afterwards to be mentioned, Mr. Spencer of Tren- 
ton was associated with him. 



16 

or twice a year ; but after this return of health, he 
experienced no recurrence of the disorder as long 
as he lived. Except a few short periods of illness, 
and a paralytick affection in his hands, which he in- 
herited from his father, and which grew upon him 
as he advanced in years, he enjoyed vigorous health 
even to old age. 

Soon after his return from Boston, the congrega- 
tion in that town, which had three years before be- 
came vacant by the death of Mr. Gumming, his 
brother-in-law, proposed to him to take a dismission 
from his people, preparatory to receiving a call from 
them ; as they had conscientious scruples about 
calling a settled minister. This preliminary step 
he refused to take, and the business went no fur- 
ther. 

In 1772, he was elected a trustee of the College of 
New- Jersey, and continued a very important mem- 
ber of that board till a few months before his death. 

The smie year commenced the second revi- 
val of religion under his ministry, which proved 
more extensive than the former, and continued a- 
bout two years. At the close of this period, in 
1774, the congregation, under the animating influ- 



17 

ence of their pastor, engaged with a laudible spi- 
rit to erect a new church. A considerable sum was 
raised for this purpose by subscription, and a quan- 
tity of materials was collected ;* but the revo- 
lutionary war, which commenced about this time, 
interrupted the design ; and in the confusion which 
followed for several years, all the materials were lost. 

This town, from its central and exposed situa- 
tion, shared largely in the troubles of the war. 
Through the whole of that anxious period, Mr. 
Macwhorter was an active friend of his country, 
and partook with his afflicted congregation in the 
hardships and perils of the revolution. This same 
year, (1775,) he was appointed by Congress to visit 
that district of North Carolina in which he had been 
before, to employ his influence to bring over the e- 
nemies of the revolution to the American interest. 
But whatever zeal and abilities were exerted in this 
enterprise, it issued, agreeably to his prediction to 
Doct. Franklin, with little success. 

In 1776, he was honoured with the degree of Doc- 



* This design was carried so far, that early in 1775, 
the trenches were opened for the foundation of the new 
building. 



18 
tor of Divinity by the corporation of Yale College. 

In the following winter, when the American af- 
fairs were at the lowest point of depression, when 
Washington with a handful of half starved and 
half naked troops, had fled through Jersey, and a- 
bandoned the State to the ravages of the British 
arms, the warm patriotism of our venerable father 
carried him to the army, encamped on the Pennsyl- 
vania shore, opposite to the city of Trenton, to con- 
cert with Washington measures for the protection 
of this State.* And he was there on the memorable 
26th of December, \vhen the American troops cros- 
sing the Delaware, took the Hessians, and turned 
the tide of the war. 

In the summer of 1778, at the solicitation of his 
friend General Knox, he accepted the chaplainship 
of his brigade, which lay then with the main army 
at White Plains. During the few months that he 
held this station, Washington was frequently his 
auditor, and he was often Washington's guest. 



* The Rev. Mr. Vanarsdale, of Springfield, feeling the 
same glow of patriotism, accompanied him in this excursion. 



'19 

While he was with the army, he was visited 
with a severe affliction in his family. In the month 
of July, Mrs. Macwhorter was struck with light- 
ning, which scorching her head and body veiy 
considerably, left her without any symptom of life. 
Though she recovered her senses in a few hours, 
she was unable to go abroad till the latter part of the 
\vinter, and even then her life was for some time 
very precarious. From this shock, her constitu- 
tion which before had been feeble, never recov- 
ered. The Doctor did not immediately take leave 
of the army, but finding at length that his atten- 
tions were necessary at home, he was obliged to 
quit his station, and return to his family. 

This affliction also prevented him from noticing, 
as he otherwise would have done, an application 
received in the month of June from the congrega- 
tional church in the city of Charleston, in South 
Carolina. But his attention was more seriously 
turned to this subject in the following November, 
by a regular call from that congregation. On this 
occasion it was suggested to him, that the friends 
of our College had fixed their eyes on him as 
the future successor of President Witherspoon : 
but notwithstanding this, his mind still inclined to- 
wards Charleston. He had the call under considera- 



20 

tion till February; but found at last that the state of 
his family, and the critical situation of Charleston, 
threatened at that time with an invasion, presented 
difficulties which it was impossible to surmount. 

In the following summer, (1779,) he received a 
call from the congregation of Charlotte, Mecklen- 
burg county, North Carolina, accompanied with an 
invitation from the trustees of Charlotte Academy 
to accept the presidency of that institution. 

This was an infant Seminary, which promised, 
under the fostering care of such a President, to be- 
come an important seat of learning. It was situated 
in the midst of his relatives, and in a part of the 
country where he might hope to be removed from 
the alarms of war. His congregation too had be- 
come much deranged by the calamities of the revo- 
lution, and his salary was deemed insufficient for his 
support. All these things considered, he judged 
it to be his duty to accept the call : and his friends 
in the congregation, under existing circumstances, 
did not oppose his removal. His pastoral relation 
to this church was accordingly dissolved; and in Oc- 
tober he took his leave of Newark, furnished, by 
the liberality of his afflicted people, with every arti- 
cle needful for his journey. 



21 

Scarcely was he settled in his new abode, when 
the troubles of the war found him there. The ar- 
my of Cornwallis, scouring the country, entered 
Charlotte. The Doctor with his family fled. 
Upon his return, he found that he had lost his 
library and furniture, with almost every thing that 
he possessed. He remained in Charlotte about a 
month after this calamity ; but apprehending new 
inroads from the enemy, he quitted the place in the 
autumn of 1780, and returned to Abington, in Penn- 
sylvania, where he engaged to preach for the win- 
ter. The people of Newark, hearing of his misfor- 
tunes, and influenced by the mingled emotions of 
sympathy and respect, invited him to make them a 
visit. This he did in February, 1781. They soon 
after sent him a regular call ; in consequence of 
which he returned in April with his family ; and 
though he was never reinstalled, he was consider- 
ed and acted as the pastor of the congregation till 
his death. 

In the autumn of 1783, just at the close of the war, 
the trustees of Washington Academy, in Somerset 
county, Maryland, ignorant that Doct. Macwhor* 
ter was permanently settled, offered him the presi- 
dency of that institution, with a salary of 300 a 
year. But though the principal object of the 






institution was the education of pious youth for the 
gospel ministry, and though the neighbouring coiuv 
try opened an extensive field for his ministerial la- 
hours, his attachment to a congregation which had 
recently given him such ingenuous proofs of af- 
fection, rendered it impossible for him to accept this 
invitation* 

The termination of the war was an event not 
less happy for the pastor, than for the congregation. 
No where was the effect more sensible than in this 
place, which from that time commenced its rapid 
growth from a few dispersed ranges of farm-houses, 
to a large, beautiful, manufacturing town. The fol- 
lowing year, (1784,) the long troubles of the pastor 
and congregation, were succeeded by a glorious re- 
vival of religion, which continued for two years. 
In no period of the Doctor's ministry, was he ob- 
served to be so deeply laden with a sense of ever- 
lasting things, and so ardent in his desire to win 
souls to Christ. Besides his labours on the Sab- 
bath, he preached several times in the week, and 
spent a part of almost every day in catechising, ex- 
horting from house to house, or attending religious 
societies. In this precious season, more than a 
liundred souls were added to the church. 



23 

This revival led to an important change in the 
practice and discipline of the church. One eve- 
ning in the autumn of 1785, when the Doctor's 
mind was deeply impressed with divine things, he 
expressed to two of his friends, in a private conver- 
sation in which he was unusually tender and com. 
municative, his concern for the want of discipline, 
and the looseness which prevailed in the church ; 
which he attributed to what has been called, the 
half-ivay practice. It is still in the recollection of 
those persons, in what a solemn and indignant man- 
ner he deplored this practice, which he averred was 
contrary to the usage of the primitive church, and 
' the opinion of the best fathers. He had found it 
here, he said, when he was settled ; but added 
with a sigh, how to get rid of it he did not know. 
He stated the necessity of drawing a line of sepa- 
ration between the clean and the unclean, and pro- 
ceeded, in a distinct manner, to sketch the plan 
which he approved ; which was precisely the same 
that the session afterwards sanctioned, 

As the subject was in a measure new to his friends, 
they listened to it not without surprise : but the ve- 
neration which they felt for their pastor, and the influ- 
ence of his opinion, roused them at once to serious 
attention to this matter. They soon became convin- 



ced, and were the means of convincing others. 
Under the solemn impressions of that period, the 
practice which the pastor had condemned began to 
be contemplated in the congregation with increasing 
concern. Still the hazard of a change was dread- 
ed, and the doubts of some were to be overcome. 
The more timid apprehended that a departure from 
long established usage, might lead to contentions 
and divisions. At length, however, after much in- 
quiry and deliberation, the session, in 1790, took up 
the subject in earnest. The Doctor publickly advo- 
cated the proposed reformation, forcibly alleging 
that no half-way members can be found in the bi- 
ble, that there are but two classes of men, and 
that they who are qualified to offer their children in 
baptism, are equally fit for the other sacrament. 
The decisive manner in which he treated these to- 
picks, and others less distinctly recollected by the 
surviving elders, removed every bar ; and it was 
solemnly and unanimously decided, that from that 
time, no persons should own the covenant U'ith a view 
to offer their children in baptism, and to neglect the 
Lord^s Supper ; and that the examination of candi- 
dates for communion, which had been left to the mi- 
nister only, should in future be conducted before the 
session. And this has been the practice of the 
church ever since. 






25 

. While this business was in agitation, the design 
of erecting a new church, which had been inter- 
rupted by the war, was resumed ; and met at once 
with so much encouragement, that in September, 
1787, in less than a month after the business was 
moved, the Doctor had the pleasure of laying the 
foundation stone ; not however on the same lot 
that had been selected before the war. Urged 
forward by the influence of some, and encouraged 
by the liberality of all, he himself obtained by 
subscription a large proportion of the sum expend- 
ed on this spacious and elegant building. He 
went into other congregations to solicit money and 
materials ; and so zealous was he to serve and a- 
nimate the congregation, that, during the following 
winter, he was daily in the forests, selecting tim- 
ber which had been given him, and encouraging the 
workmen. On the first day of January, 1791, the 
house was opened for publick worship, and was 
soon after elegantly completed : and it " stands," 
in the modest language of your benefactor, " as a 
monument of the generosity and publick spirit of 
this society." But your language will be : " It stands 
as a monument of the love and indefatigable ex- 
ertions of our deceased pastor." And my prayer 
is, that it may stand as a lasting remembrancer of 
his many warnings and instructions, which these 
walls have reflected upon your ears. 



26 

While the new church was erecting, the Doctor's 
attention was called to another subject of a still 
more important nature. He was one of those great 
and good men, who, in 1788, had principal in- 
fluence in settling The Confession of Faith, and 
framing the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church 
in the United States j and in transferring the au- 
thority of the highest judicatory from the Synod 
to a General Assembly, which met first in May, 
1739. Ten years afterwards, when a board of 
trustees for the General Assembly was incorpo- 
rated by the Legislature of Pennsylvania, at their 
session in the winter of 1798, 9, he was named 
in the charter as one of the board, and continued 
to hold this trust, until the growing infirmities of 
age induced him, in 1803, to resign it. 



In 1796, he was blessed with another revival of 
religion in the congregation, by means of which 
30 or 40 new members were added to the church. 
In 1802, the fifth and last revival under his ministry 
commenced. This continued two years ; and in 
that period, 140 new members, besides those re- 
ceived from other churches, were added to our 
communion ; of whom 113 were received in the 
course of 12 months. 

In former years, Doct. Macwhorter had been 



27 

employed by the trustees of our College to ob- 
tain subscriptions in this town for the benefit of 
that Seminary : and when by the late disastrous 
conflagration the College edifice was consumed, 
they appointed him, in the spring of 1802, to so- 
licit benefactions in New-England, to aid in the e- 
rection of a new College. Advanced as he was in 
years, his publick spirit would not suffer him to 
shrink from the task ; and in the issue he brought 
more than 7000 dollars into the College funds. 
On very many less important occasions, his singular 
skill and publick spirit were called forth in a si- 
milar way ; but these it is neither proper nor pos . 
sible to enumerate. 

My reverend father lived to a good old age. As 
I have heard him say, he lived to see two worlds 
die. He trod the path of life with those who have 
long since gone to rest. Your fathers knew him ; 
and he helped to fit those for heaven whose aged 
dust now sleeps in that hallowed ground. He bap- 
tised most of you, and will shortly meet those fa- 
ces at the bar of God which he covered with the 

sacramental water. When I have heard him 

talk of the events of other times, and the well 
known characters with whom he acted on the pub- 
lick stage, before I had existence, and saw him a- 



28 

. 

lone amidst a younger race,' I have often con- 
templated him as a venerable oak which once 
stood in the midst of the forest : the ruthless axe 
of time has laid his companions low ; and now he 
stands alone on the open plain, and every wither- 
ed leaf trembles in the blast. That trunk which 
seventy winters had in vain assailed, must fall at 
last, like the companions of his youth. He has 
fallen, and is gathered to his fathers ! He no long- 
er stands alone in the open plain ; he is surround- 
ed once more by the companions of his youth, and 
stands, we trust, transplanted and renewed among 
the trees in the paradise of God. 



Yes, he lived to a good old age, and saw what 
changes the current of threescore years will make 
in a transitory world. In the spring of 1806, at 
the close of the last General Assembly that he at- 
tended, he felt a desire to visit once more the place 
of his nativity, which he had not seen for more 
than 40 years. He made an excursion to New- 
castle county ; and when he arrived on the ground 
which had often been paced over with his infant 
steps, he knexv it not Every thing was changed. 
The information of strangers was necessary to 
tell him that there his father lived. A cellar, half 
filled by time, marked the spot where he first drew 



29 

breath. He could find none that knew him, and 
but one aged person that ever knew the family. He 
requested only to be supplied with a glass from 
the spring that used to slake his boyish thirst, that 
he might say, " I have tasted that spring again ;" 

and this desire fulfilled, he hastily turned and 

left the scene forever. 

On the evening of the 25th of December last, 
he received an injury from a fall, from which he 
never recovered. He went to the house of God 
no more. In the first stages of his illness, he said 
little which discovered the state of his mind, ex- 
cept the often repeated sentence, It is the Lord, and 
he does that which is perfectly right. In February, 
when the dissolution of his aged consort was mani- 
festly approaching, and his own nature was sinking 
under infirmities, his younger son was taken off by 
a disease, so rapid in its progress that his parents, 
though in the neighbourhood, knew not that he was 
sick till they heard that he was dead. At that awful 
moment, I visited the father with a trembling heart, 
expecting to find him overwhelmed with these com- 
plicated calamities. But I found him composed and 
submissive to a degree that told me, I had never 
known this man of God before. From that time, 
the submission and piety of his heart shone forth 



30 

with increased loveliness ; his constitutional reserve 
was in a measure gone, and his conversation often 
breathed the tenderness and sweetness of gospel hu- 
mility and comfort. On the 2d day of April, the 
wife of his youth closed the long scene of her suf- 
ferings, with all the interesting tokens of child- 
like piety. He sustained the shock, as he had done 
his other afflictions, with submission and patience. 
He had now nothing to do but to make arrange- 
ments for his own approaching dissolution. He sent 
an affectionate and impressive farewell to his bre- 
thren of the Presbytery ; he distributed his volumes 
of sermons among his children, grand-children, and 
relatives; and gave directions about his funeral. I 
could never discover in him any solicitude about 
death, except an anxiety to be gone. I die slow; I ne- 
ver expected to die so slow, he would sometimes say. 
One day I ventured to suggest to him a hope that 
he might yet be continued with us, and begged him 
not to despond. / have no despondency, said he ; 
death and I have long been intimates. To a hint 
that I could not do without him, he replied with 
paternal tenderness, God will give you strength ac- 
cording to your day ; only trust in him, and he will 
support you under every trial I never discovered 
any impatience in him, except when he was told 
that he was better, and might possibly recover. 



31 

When reminded that he was going to the compa- 
nions of his youth, he replied with emotion, Yes, 
there is a precious company of them ! ivhat a pre- 
cious company ! When it was suggested that the 
God whom he had long and faithfully served, would 
not forsake him in old age, he answered with quick- 
ness and apparent uneasiness, that he had no faith- 
fulness of his own to rely on, that a review of his life 
afforded him little satisfaction, that it had been mi- 
serably polluted, and that his only hope rested on the 
atonement of Uirist. He repeatedly lamented, in 
strong language, the imperfection of his life, and dis- 
carded every hope but that which the gospel affords. I 
said to him, about three weeks ago, " You do not at 
any time find your prospects clouded ?" He replied, 
Ab, blessed be God! I have a steady hope. Always 
patient, and always composed, he sometimes appear- 
ed transported with Pisgah views. A few evenings 
before his death, he was observed wrestling with God 
for his release from the flesh. While he lay in the 
struggles of death, I asked him whether he still en- 
joyed the light of God's countenance. He lifted 
his hands and eyes in a way of strong affirmation. 
The last word which he uttered, was expressive of a 
desire that we should unite with him in prayer. A few 
minutes before he expired, he gave his hands to two 
of his friends as a farewell token, and expressed by 



32 

signs a wish to unite with us once more in prayer. 
As the supplication was making that God would re- 
lease him, and receive his departing spirit, he extend, 
ed both of his arms towards heaven at full length, 
Seemingly in the transports of faith and desire. It 
was the last motion that he made. His hands fell and 
moved no more. That moment the difficulty of his 
respiration ceased ; he appeared perfectly at rest ; 
and in five minutes breathed forth his soul, without 
a struggle, into the bosom of his God. He expi- 
red 37 minutes past 7 o'clock, on Monday evening, 
the 20th instant, aged 73 years and 5 days. 

Thus lived, and thus died Doctor Alexander 
Macwhorter, after having served this people in the 
gospel ministry 48 years. 

The memory of the just is blessed! Let me die the 
death of the righteous, and let my last end be like 
his!* 



* A church has been established in this town 140 years ; 
during which time eight ministers, besides the one now 
living, have been installed over it. 

1. Mr. .. ... Pierson, having been episcopally ordain- 

ed in or near Newark, in Eng- 



23 

The aspect of Doct. Macwhorter was grave and 
venerable, and strongly expressive of the properties 
of his mind. His deportment was affectionate, pa- 
ternal, and dignified ; calculated to inspire respect 



land, came to this town with the 
first settlers, in 1667; and died a* 
bout the year 1680. 

2, Mr. Abraham Pierson, son of the former, was for se- 
veral years the colleague of his fa- 
ther $ after whose death he con- 
tinued to be the pastor of the con- 
gregation only a few years. He 
was dismissed, and afterwards set- 
tled at Killingworth, in Connecti- 
cut. His name is well known as 
the first President of Yale-College. 

3. Mr. John Prudden was settled about the year 1686, 

and was dismissed about the year 
1699. 

4. Mr. Jabez Wakeman was installed in 1701, and died in 

1704. 

5. Mr. Nathaniel Bowers took the charge of the congrega- 

tion about the year 1706, and was 
dismissed about the year 1716. 

6. Mr, Joseph Webb was installed Oct. 1719, and was 






and dependance, and to repel the approach of pre- 
sumptuous familiarity : yet in conversation he was 
pleasant, and often facetious. At a great remove from 
assumed importance and supercilious airs, which 



dismissed about the year 1737. 

7. Mr. Aaron Burr was installed about the year 1738, 

and was dismissed in 1755, on ac- 
count of the removal of the Col- 
lege over which he presided. Pre- 
sident Burr was married to a 
daughter of the celebrated Presi- 
dent Edwards ; and was the father 
of Col. Aaron Burr, late Vice-Pre- 
sident of the United States, and 
of Mrs. Reeve, wife of the Hon. 
Tappan Reeve, one of the Judg- 
es of the Supreme Court in the 
State of Connecticut. 

8. Doct. Alexander Macwhorter was installed in the sum- 

mer of 1759. He was dismissed 
in October, 1779; but returned, 
and took the charge of the congre- 
gation again ; which he held till 
his death. 

It is remarkable that all the ministers that were ever 
settled over this church were dismissed, except the first, 
and one other who died young. 



35 

never were connected with such a mind as his, he 
was much of a gentleman, and an uncommon in- 
stance of true dignity. 

He possessed a powerful and scientifick mind, 
with a most retentive memory. He was wise and 
discerning, and had an eye that could penetrate the 
characters of men, and look through the connexion 
and consequences of things. His apprehensions 
were not quick, but unusually just. He possessed 
little fancy, but a deep and solid judgment. His 
genius had no uncommon share of vivacity ; it 
held a stately and even coxirse. It had no wings ; 
but it stood like the pillars of the earth. He ne- 
ver would have gathered laurels in the paths of po- 
etry ; but he would have filled with superior dig- 
nity the seat of justice. His passions, like his un- 
derstanding, were strong ; but ordinarily held by 
strong restraints. With far less imagination than 
intellect, he was no enthusiast in any thing. He 
was never sanguine ; but cool, deliberate, and cau- 
tious, to a degree that approached even to timidity ; 
inclined rather to contemplate the difficulties of an 
enterprise, than to calculate on success. Great, 
as he was, he was a man of most unaffected and 
consummate modesty. It was impossible for a 
mind thus constructed to be ru.sb. He used to sav 



36 

that the second requisite in a minister of the gospel 
is prudence ; and he possessed this virtue, I may 
say, almost to excess. 

The furniture of his mind resembled its construe- 
tion. He was more thoroughly versed in classical 
literature than in Belles-Lettres ; and loved the 
Mathematicks better than Milton or Pope. He 
was a proficient in some of the Oriental langua- 
ges. He had looked into the Syriack, had made 
considerable progress in the Hebrew, and was cri- 
tically acquainted with the Greek and Latin. He 
was well furnished with theological and literary sci- 
ence in general. He was a firm supporter of the 
great doctrines of grace ; as his discourses which 
you have heard from this sacred place, can wit- 
ness ; and as his body of sermons, left among you 
as a lasting monument of his love, sufficiently attest. 

In the former part of his ministry, he was a pun- 
gent and popular preacher : and though the ardour 
of his addresses was necessarily abated by age, his 
sermons continued to be instructive, and were 
heard with affection by a people, who in his im- 
paired voice still recognised the accents of a father. 
His preaching was solid, judicious, and often mov- 
ing. It was not the transient glare of the comet ; 



37 

"but the strong and steady light of the sun. He re- 
garded with sovereign contempt the pretty brillian- 
cies and fustian declamation of those who show us 
how an apostle did not preach. 

But he never appeared in his might so perfectly 
as in a deliberative assembly ; especially when his 
cautious and penetrating mind had leisure to exa- 
mine well the bearings of the subject. .Thoroughly 
versed in all the forms of presbyterial business, with 
a skill at management rarely surpassed, he filled a 
great space in the judicatories of our church. His 
voice was listened to with profound respect, and 
the counsels suggested by his superior wisdom, en- 
lightened and swayed our publick bodies. 

In the services of the sanctuary, and in all his 
parochial labours, he added to faithfulness great 
method and punctuality; and, with a uniformity 
peculiar to himself, was always the same. He was 
a distinguished peace-maker; and by his skill in 
settling disputes, added to his other excellent ma- 
nagement, he greatly promoted the harmony and 
strength of the congregation. A liberal contribu- 
tor himself to all charitable designs, and possessing 
a happy talent to awaken the same disposition in 
others, he was the means of forming a ministerial 



38 

and charitable people, as well as a numerous and 
orthodox church. And though there are, in every 
place, some spirits which never can be excited by 
human influence to generous actions, he probably 
left as few of this description as can be found in 
any other congregation equally numerous. He was, 
I believe, in a great measure, the instrumental cause 
of the distinguished temporal and spiritual blessings 
which have been bestowed on the congregation, by 
keeping alive in them that publick and charitable 
spirit which God delights to honour. 

In every point of view, he was a great benefactor 
of the congregation ; and you in return loved and 
revered him in no common degree. The delicate 
respect which you paid to him in advanced age, the 
full support which you continued cheerfully to af- 
ford him, when his power to serve you was impaired, 
and even after it had totally ceased, and your anx- 
ious attentions to him in his last illness, were instances 
of justice and ingenuousness which you must now 
review with satisfaction. They were instances of jus- 
tice and ingenuousness of which he himself was ten- 
derly sensible. / leave, said he with tears, the 
kindest and best people that ever minister had. 

Yes, you loved and revered him in no common 



39 

degree, as your countenances and conduct this day 
attest. But he is gone ! and you will see his face 
no more ! No more will his anxious soul weep over 
you and your children. You must go to him ; 

but he will not return to you. Yes, he. is 

gone ! He is removed from you ! alas ! he is remov- 
ed from me ! My father ! my father ! the chariot 
of Israel, and the horsemen thereof! Oh ! that I 
might catch his falling mantle, with a portion of his 
spirit, and be to you, in some degree, what he 
has been! 

The occasion calls for a word of condolence to 
the bereaved children. 

With heartfelt sympathy, my dear friends, I par- 
take of all your sorrows. The extent of your ca- 
lamity is not hid from me while I consider my own. 
Few there are that could have lost so much in a 
single friend : but instead of repining, you have rea- 
son to bless God that you had such a friend to lose. 
You have reason to bless God for sparing him to 
you so long ; and yet more, that he has left you so 
rich a legacy ^n his examples and prayers. As Be- 
za said of Calvin, and as Mather said of Flavel, 
since your father is dead, life will be less sweet, and 
death less bitter to us. Henceforth there will be less 



40 

to bind our hearts to earth, and more to draw them 
towards heaven. May the examples of your deceas- 
ed father be set as beacons to direct your passage 
to glory. May the counsels of his love long sound 
in your ears; and the prayers which his quivering 
lips poured forth for you in the midnight hour, come 
up before the Lord as incense presented by the in- 
terceding Angel. Deprived of your earthly parent, 
seek, I entreat you, a Father in heaven who will ne- 
ver die. To His arms, who delights to be known as 
the Father of the fatherless, I affectionately commit 
you ; and pray that you may find in Him a Parent, 
and an everlasting portion. 

I turn now to my afflicted congregation. 

The awful event which has hutig this house with 
mourning, and covered with grief our widowed 
church, ought not, and must not pass off merely 
\vith a few sighs and tears. It ought to be, and it 
must be improved as ontr of those solemn dispensa- 
tions of Providence which are intended to rouse a 
whole people from sleep, to croud vast ideas through 
their minds, and to fix lasting impressions on their 
hearts. 

This is the proper time, my beloved hearers, to 



41 

call to mind the instructions which your deceased 
father imparted to ) r ou ; the good examples which 
he set before you ; his manner of coming in and go- 
ing out among you, for a long course of years ; and 
all the interesting intercourse which you had with 
him. If you would give scope to your thoughts, 
you might recall scenes that would awaken your 
tenderest aifections, and truths that would render 
you as solemn as eternity. This is the proper time 
also to consider deeply the business on which God 
sent his servant among you ; the reception which 
his heavenly messages met from you ; the awful ac- 
count which you must give of your improvement of 
them, when you shall meet your minister at the tri- 
bunal of Christ ; and the influence which his mi- 
nistry will have on your happiness or misery, ten 
thousand ages after the funeral of this world. 

Know, then, that he was sent among you as an 
ambassador of heaven, to offer you, in the name of 
his God, terms of reconciliation. He was not mere- 
ly your father and friend, but your watchman, an 
officer of Christ, whose commission was received 
from heaven, and whose ministry and its effects have 
been attentively noticed from the throne of the om- 
niscient God. 



42 

How he executed this commission, God is wit 
ness ; and you are witnesses against yourselves. 
JWicreforey I take you to record this day that he is 
purs from your blood. He opened to you the great 
doctrines of grace. He taught you the original fall 
and total depravity of man. He pressed upon you 
the absolute necessity of being born again, by the 
supernal ural operation of the spirit of God on the 
heart. While in one hand he offered you the un- 
searchable riches of Christ, with the other he point- 
ed the curse of a broken law against every unre- 
generate sinner. He confined not his labours to the 
pulpit ; but watched those softer moments of speak- 
ing which promised him easier access to your hearts. 
He visited your chambers of sickness, and counsel- 
led and prayed by your beds of pain. With his pa- 
ternal sympathy he soothed your griefs. While he 
wept for you, he wiped the tear that trembled in 
your eye. He warned and entreated you in pri- 
\a e. He catechised you when you were children ; 
and laboured, by prayers and tears, to imbue your 
infant minds with the love of Christ. These things 
Le did ; and these things are recorded in the rolls 
of heaven, to bz preserved in everlasting remem- 
brajtce, and to be exhibited on your trial at the last 
day. 



43 

The doctrines which he taught you he did not in- 
deed seal with his blood ; but he gave a confirma- 
tion of them in his death no less decisive. They 
were the truths which supported his soul in his slow 
approach to the shadow of death. They furnish- 
ed the whole theme of his religious conversation, 
and his only comfort in a near view of eternity. 
Hume* and Voltaire, after spending their lives in 
disseminating their pernicious errors, shrunk at last 
from their own dogmas as from hell itself, and died 
in the horrors of despair. But your minister, af- 
ter spending 48 years in preaching the doctrines of 
grace, left the world, triumphantly reposing on the 
blessed truths which he had taught. His dying eye 
said to us, in language not equivocal, " support 
these precious doctrines, and they will support you." 
We saw his arms extended towards heaven, with 
passionate desires to depart, but five minutes before 
he expired. We saw, after motion had ceased, 
his still intelligent eye fixed with pity on a weep- 
ing child, looking unutterable things, as though 
he wished to express what he discovered on 
the confines of the eternal world. In that precise 

* This fact in regard to Hume is well known to the 
religious people of Scotland, though much address has been 
employed to conceal it from the world. 



44 

posture he lay, preaching all his doctrines gyer a- 
gain from the very vestibule of heaven, until Jjis 

eyes closed ; and in one minute he was g.one ! 

We had followed him so near the precincts of light, 
that imagination could almost see him fly and en- 
ter in ! He had looked back and spoken to us with 
his eyes, so near the heavenly gate, that we seem- 
ed almost to hear his voice, the next moment, a- 
mong the choir of the redeemed ! We seemed al- 
most to see the companions of his youth pressing 
forward to embrace and welcome him to glory ; 
and to hear their loud congratulations ! Then it 
was that I felt the reality of that separate state of 
conscious being of which he had so often spoken. 
" There flies that soul," said I, " which but just 
now spoke out of those swimming eyes ! Yonder is 
my father, whose accents have been so familiar to 
me, and with whom I went to the house of God in 
company /" 

Yes, while his body lies insensible before you, 
his soul still lives in a conscious state. He loved 
you much ; and in the abodes of bliss will, I 
doubt not, often think of you. Perhaps he may 
sometimes pass this way, to mark how you im- 
prove the instructions which he left among you, and 
whether you are coming after him to glory. I 






45 

have a strong persuasion that his former family and 
flock will not be wholly excluded from his present 
cares. Perhaps he will sometimes visit our assent' 
blies, to hear those truths repeated which he so of- 
ten preached, and to observe their effects on you. 
Perhaps he may now be present ! Sainted Spirit ! 
hast thou come to witness our griefs ? Do I see 
thee hovering over our assembly ? O ! if thou 
wouldst speak to us now, thy doctrines would no 

longer be unheeded ! Alas ! he speaks no 

more ! His ministry among us is then forever closed, 
and sealed up to the judgment of the great day. 
Nothing can be added to it, or taken from it. He 
has done what he had to do, and has returned to 

Him that sent him. But his ministry has not 

done with us. Think not, that, except tears and 
tender remembrance, you have nothing more to 
do with your deceased pastor. As the Lord liv- 
eth, you shall meet him again. When the dissolv- 
ing heavens shall open, and disclose the Son of man, 
coming in clouds to judge the world, your father, 
we trust, will be in His glorious train. And when 
the convulsions of that day shall burst the dormito- 
ries of a thousand generations, his sleeping body 
will rise ! Then, he who baptised you, he who 
catechised you, he who warned and wept over 
you, shall stand with you in judgment. Then, 






all the scenes which have passed between you and 
him shall be examined, and an account taken how 
you improved his ministry in general, and each 
sermon in particular. Every hour that you sat 
under the sound of his voice, shall be found to 
have been big with life or death. The effects of 
improving or resisting his ministry, shall be felt 

through every hour and moment of eternity ! 

Oh ! did you consider this while your minister liv- 
ed ? Did you consider this while his agitated soul 
was pleading over you? Did you consider this 
while you were bearing his clay-cold body to the 
house of God ? Did you consider, that you were 
attending one who must be a witness, either for or 
against you, in the day that shall decide the des- 
tinies of all men, and whose ministry must either 
help you to heaven, or sink you deeper in hell ? 

1 see some of you tremble. But the half has 

not been told you. If a review of his ministry be 
so overwhelming at present, what will it be in the 
day of judgment ! If in the land of peace ^ where- 
in you trust, it has wearied you, then how will you 
do in the swelling of Jordan ? 

My dear hearers, I ask each of you what ac- 
count your translated pastor has already given of 
you in heaven ? What had he to relate ? What im- 



47 

*> 

provement have you in fact made of his ministry ? 
Have you embraced the Lord Jesus Christ through 
his instrumentality ? Or have you rejected all his 
earnest entreaties ? I suppose that the greater part 
of those who hear me, are either his spiritual child- 
ren, or they who for years have slighted his invi- 
tations. 

You who are his spiritual children, have lost a 
father indeed, and have good reason to remember 
him more than any other created being. Your case a- 
wakens peculiar compassion ; for you have lost, (so to 
speak,) your all, and can never see his like again. 
For though you have ten thousand instructers in 
Christ, yet have ye not many fathers ; for in Christ 
Jesus he hath begotten you through the gospel. And 
though all other men. should forget him, by you 
he will surely be had in everlasting remembrance. Yet 
let your hearts be cheered with a prospect of en- 
joying a more perfect union with him in a better 
world. The seals of his ministry you are, and are 
reserved to be his crown of rejoicing in the presence 
of Christ. And I doubt not, that after all earthly ties 
shall have ceased, between you and him will subsist 
a special and most tender union forever. You shall 
find all his predictions of good fulfilled ) and when 
your happy souls shall feel their accomplishment, 



" high in salvation and the realms of bliss,'* then 
shall you know, to your everlasting joy, that a pro- 
phet has been among you. Wherefore, comfort one 
another -with these -words. 

Others, I fear, there are, who, though he was to 
them as a very lovely song of one that hath a plea- 
sant voice, have never accepted the message which 
he brought them from God. Content with loving 
the man, and weeping perhaps under his affection- 
ate sermons, they have never repented of their sins 
nor bowed to the sceptre of Christ. Such will yet 
know, alas ! when it is too late, that more than a 
soother of their ear, that a prophet of the Lord has 
been among them. When they shall feel the curse 
which he denounced, forever fastened on their souls, 
when every sermon which he preached shall be 
as a thunderbolt, riving the nerves of their hearts, 
then shall they know, to their eternal confusion, 
that a prophet has been among them. In the re- 
gions of hell, equally as in heaven, our father and his 
ministry shall be had in everlasting remembrance. 
Oh ! how will they look back to the days when 
they sat under the melting voice of their minister ! 

to seasons when tears of compassion choked 

his words, as he entreated them to have compas- 
sion on themselves \ " Ten thousand worlds," they 



49 

will cry, " for one more sermon, for one more prayer, 
of our ancient minister !" but it will be too late. 

Are there not some in this assembly, who have 
lived ten, twenty, or thirty years under his ministry, 
who are yet unreconciled to God ? Are there not 
some whom he baptised more than forty years ago, 
who still remain aliens from the Commonwealth of 
Israel ? Are there not some who can remember the 
day of his instalment ; who have sat under his 
calls during the whole course of his ministry ; and 
instead of growing up for heaven, have grown grey 
in sin, and are now almost ripe for judgment ? Al- 
mighty God ! pierce their hearts with conviction, 
ere thou smite them with thy curse ! 

All those who remain uninterested in the blessings 
of the gospel, at the close of our father's ministry, 
I adjure, in the name of God, to make a solemn 
pause. Pause, I beseech you, at this awful crisis. 
Your minister is gone ; and you are not the better 
for him ! He came on God's errand, he delivered 
his message, he has done his work, and returned ; 
and you have rejected his minis fry / The harvest 
is past L , the summer is ended, and you are not saved ! 

- Is there then no hope ? Yes, blessed be 

God ! one hope remains : set your anxious minds 



50 

to recollect the doctrines which he taught, and the 
duties which he inculcated ; and hasten to believe the 
one, and practise the other. O ! yield, for once, to 
the voice of anxious friendship ! Or, if the accents 
of your living pastor be unheeded, listen, I conjure 
you, to that reverend voice which seems to issue 
from the eternal world, from a Soul which now 
has seen the amazing rewards or torments in re- 
serve for you. Methinks I hear him cry, " O my 
poor, dear people ! whom I laboured so long to 
save ; do not let my ministry crush you to the low- 
est hell !" Heard you not that voice ? And can 

you resist it? No, you cannot, you must not,r* 
you shall not, if prayers or tears can move you. 
I will deluge you with my griefs ; I will kneel 
and clasp your feet. By the shades of your pious 
fathers, who also stretch forth their hands to you, 
by the bowels of Christ, hear that voice from hea- 
ven, which on earth you disregarded ! Ye who 
have slumbered away an inestimable season, never 
to be recalled, days that are now " with the years 
beyond the flood," awake ! At this late hour, arise 
to improve his ministry : that when the radiant Saint 
shall bend his eye tovvard the earth, to see whe- 
ther the seed, sown in this beloved garden, shoots, 
he may have the joy to see it springing up in your 
hearts, and not the grief, (if grief could be in hea- 



Si 

ven,) to discover that his labours will prove an tier, 
nal curse to those whom he loved. Eternal Mer- 
cy ! grant that thy servant, like another Sampson, 
may do more execution in his death, than in his 
life ! 

And now, farewell, thou man of God ! my father ! 
my friend ! Sweet be thy sleep in the tomb ! and 
kind be thy thoughts of us in heaven ! Thou hast 

left me alone, and I am solitary and weak. 

Yes, I am weak and solitary, O my friends ! Crush- 
ed by the weight of so great a charge, I cannot lift 
up myself. I need and entreat your prayers. I need 
your candour, your sympathy, your counsel, and 
your support. Entreat God for me, that I may sus- 
tain the weighty charge with prudence, fidelity, and 
success ; that, like David, I may go forth, though 
it be only with a sling and a stone, in the name of 
the God of the armies of Israel. It comforts me to 
remember the prayer which Solomon offered in his 
distress, when left alone by his father to manage 
the affairs of Israel. He complained that he was as 
weak and unskilful as a little child. But he asked 
wisdom of God, and the Lord gave it to him. I will 
remember this ; and I will also press to my bosom 
the paternal words of my dear departed friend : God 
will give you strength according to your day t 



52 

only trust in Him, and He will support you under 
every trial. By the happy accomplishment of this 
tender prediction, may / also find that a prophet 
has been among us. Grant it, O my God ! through 
Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 












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